Synchronus Mundi
by Fallarin
Summary: In six years, Alice has achieved her worldly dreams and discovered that she yearns to return to Underland. A curious message reaches her that cannot be coincidence; but is it from the one she misses most, or are there more sinister games afoot?
1. Prologue: Start at the Beginning

_**Author's disclaimer: The characters in this story belong in mind, heart, and spirit to the great Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a.k.a. Lewis Carroll. No doubt they were used by virtue of some fearsomely complicated permission by Tim Burton to make the 2010 film. They are herein used without permission by me, strictly for the purpose of entertainment and without intent of or desire for profit.**_

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_And if he left off dreaming about you, where do you suppose you'd be?_

_ - Lewis Carroll_

"Is it done? Can you see her? Let me look, let me look!"

A groping hand, its fingers worn bloody by ill use and disappointment, scrabbled at the lean-muscled arms that held the scrying bowl, sloshing the green-tinted liquid within. The owner of the arms tightened them protectively around the chipped stone bowl and snapped, "Don't touch it! You've almost upset it—it'll take years to brew up enough Seewater again. Now, do let me concentrate."

The hand retracted to become one of a folded pair of arms. The first speaker sat back against the low stone wall with a huff. "Well, hurry up about it. This has taken far too long already; I simply don't have it in me to wait for the end of Underland to see Alice again. I'll go mad first."

"Might be an improvement," murmured the second speaker, as he bent over the rude bowl. "Ah. Here we are." He was silent a long moment, while his companion shifted and muttered restlessly. "Well, well. Alice has done very well for herself in Overland, it appears. She's in a most remarkable place...wait a moment." Sensing his companion's eagerness, he aimed a well-timed elbow to block the grasping fingers once more. "Go and fetch the Derisionator, be a sport."

Footsteps stomped off as if to flatten the stone through sheer impatience. Unperturbed, the thin man continued to gaze down into the clear green Seewater, mesmerized by the images presented within. "Alice," he whispered, stroking the cracked glaze of the bowl almost reverently, "Are you as close as you seem? Is it really almost time, at last?"

The footsteps returned, and a six-sided ungainly object of glass and metal was almost, but not quite, tossed angrily at his feet. Its bearer knew its value and didn't quite dare to harm the thing. "Pick it up," the thin man ordered, without looking away from the vision in his bowl, then added, "Now extend the frooblejib—all the way, until it clicks—and give it to me."

He took the device when it was offered, careful not to jostle the precious Seewater in the bowl. A long silvery tentacle now protruded from one end, waving around as if scenting the breeze. The man inserted the tip of the tentacle into the liquid. His companion leaned over his shoulder, scarcely breathing.

At once, the Seewater began to steam. The steam rose in random whorls and cataracts at first, but once clear of the bowl by a few inches, the mass resolved itself into a series of numbers and calculations, wavering but clear, hanging there midair.

The man smiled.

His companion's ample brow, which had all this time been contracted in discontent and puzzlement, cleared abruptly. "Oh. It's a steam-difference engine. Why, that's brilliant."

He took brilliance as his due, in silence. "She's close," he murmured, and licked his lips. "Oh, she's very close indeed. She on the other side of her world, we on the other side of ours, but the opposites cancel themselves out." He peered closely at the hovering, shifting numbers. "Yes, I think..I think we can just reach her, enough to plant a suggestion."

"And bring her here?" his companion asked eagerly.

For the first time, the man looked up. "Yes, right here." He frowned at the long, broken causeway of stone that extended like an accusing finger into the surging ocean. The water, like the sky, was always restless and gray here. The land was barren and the wind blew constantly, flattening anything that tried to grow. The monotonous view was broken only by a few stunted trees, a broken-down hovel, and one single remarkable feature: two worn standing stones more than fifty feet high, side by side at the point where the causeway broadened into the island's desolate coastline. The queastward pillar was a tall, curving spike of yellowed ivory, chipped here and there and blunted by time. The snudward pillar was no less damaged, a cracked and twisted shaft of red oxhorn. Yet still they stood, and that was something, in this place

On the whole, it was a forbidding sort of place, and he was sick of looking at it. He might never escape, but if he could bring Alice, beautiful Alice, here to him, then she would at least provide a diversion for a little while. The rest of his life, perhaps. Or, as was more likely—here he shot a scowl at his companion—the rest of Alice's life.

Iracebeth of Crims stood gazing down at him now. Without looking at her, Ilosovic Stayne could sense her fear of him, her hatred of him, and her love for him. It made him sick, the idea of all those emotions warring for space inside her oversized skull. She wanted to kill him, he knew. She also wanted to make him love her. He knew, too, but as she hadn't the crown any longer, she lacked the power to do either.

The Knave of Hearts cared nothing for his former queen, except perhaps to feel revulsion. However, what Stayne feared most was madness, and he was certain that, left alone on this Outlandish island, he would in fact go mad. His black heart nursed long grievances against Iracebeth, and but for fear of going bonkers in his own company, he might have slain her while she slept long before now.

There was also the matter of her temper. She could just as easily kill him in his sleep. They had an uneasy truce, born of the necessity to survive. It wasn't pretty, but it was all they had. However, if Stayne could bring Alice to them, that would change everything. He might never escape from Outland, but he would at least have his beautiful girl for a diversion. He could also create quite a jealous rage in Iracebeth once Alice was with them, and that would be a diversion of another sort. He would enjoy seeing them fight.

Iracebeth began to pace, distracting him out of his reverie. "When, Stayne? How soon can you get her here?"

Stayne rubbed his jutting chin, still watching the numbers. "You're in a terrible rush," he drawled.

"Yes!" she screamed, balling her fists and contorting her face until it turned red. Stayne glanced at her, then away, disinterested. It had been a long time since her rages had intimidated him. "Yes, I am, you fool! That miserable girl destroyed my kingdom, my happiness...my _life!_" She stomped up to him and drew back a hand as if to strike.

"Have you forgotten our deal?" Stayne asked coldly. "I did the work to create the Seewater, I smuggled in the Derisionator, therefore I get Alice before you do."

Slowly, Iracebeth lowered her hand and glared at him, her jaw working in impotent fury. "Fine," she said in the end, through clenched teeth. "Just tell me how long it will take."

Stayne laughed, a sound that made Iracebeth shiver, though she'd never admit that. "Patience, Big Head. Remember that once we make our move, your sister will be aware of it and can make a countermove. If she's watching."

"Do you think she is?" Despite herself, Iracebeth was worried.

"I think we cannot rule it out. We already know that Mirana has spies who can move between Underland and Overland at will. We don't have the advantage of numbers, so we must use our wits. We plant a suggestion that she won't see coming, and hope she won't be able to counter it in time."

The former Red Queen smiled mirthlessly. "Plant the suggestion that she take off her own head."

Stayne yawned. "What fun would that be? No, we have to make Alice want to come to us." He pondered a moment, then lifted one long finger, still sheathed in a tattered black leather glove. "A riddle." He sneered. "Alice loves riddles, remember? She was forever going on about them with that mad Hatter. Hightopp. Utter lunatic, but he and Alice..." he trailed off.

"Yes, yes. Thick as thieves, the pair of them. I remember. So? What about the riddle, Stayne?"

"He and Alice," the Knave of Hearts repeated, distractedly.

"_What about them?" _She'd gone red as her hair once again. A most unattractive quality, the Knave thought absently, and showed the edges of his teeth at Iracebeth.

"Our riddle," he said slowly and distinctly, as if speaking to a child, "Will bring Alice to him."

Iracebeth scowled. "To him? Why? You're supposed to bring her to us!"

Stayne sighed. "Him," he explained, "Is us."

"Oh." She thought this over. "Oh! You mean, make her believe _we_ are _he_."

"She will."

"Will what?"

"Believe it."

"How?"

With exaggerated care, Stayne removed the Derisionator tentacle from the Seewater. He set bowl and device aside. He unfolded long limbs and stood up, towering over Iracebeth. He resisted the urge to take her by the throat and choke the life out of her right then and there. "With," he said, "A riddle."

She harumphed. "It had better be a good one."

"Have you been listening? This is the Hatter we're talking about. It doesn't have to be good. It just has to be nonsense."

Iracebeth was thinking now. Her forehead wrinkled into deep valleys with the effort of it. "But...how can a riddle bring her here?"

By way of answer, Stayne pointed at the two pillars behind them. She followed the direction of his finger. "The Gates? Yes, I see...they brought us here, so they could bring her here. But from Overland?" Iracebeth was doubtful. "Do they have that much power?"

"They didn't bring us here," Stayne corrected. "We were sent here through them. Our riddle must make Alice send herself through, to us. That can happen from anywhere."

"But...how is a riddle like a Gate?"

Stayne shrugged. "How is a raven like a writing desk?" He leaned forward and tapped the side of her head. "The answer lies in the power of suggestion."

Irritably, she batted his hand away. It was too painful when he touched her, even in jest. Especially in jest. "Suggest what you like, Stayne," she said, and turned her back on him. "As long as I get Alice's head in the end, I win." She began to walk back along the jetty, toward the hovel. She needed quiet, time to think things over and plan what do to now that Alice was within her grasp.

"You'll get her head," Stayne called after her, "After I finish with her body."

The outraged shriek that followed this comment did not come from the wind.


	2. Dreams and Riddles

_And 'mid this tumult, Kubla heard from far_

_Ancestral voices prophesying war!_

_The shadow of the dome of pleasure_

_Floated midway on the waves,_

_Where was heard the mingled measure_

_From the mountain and the caves._

_ - Samuel Taylor Coleridge_

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The dream changed after her second visit to Underland. For a long time, months, Alice didn't dream at all—or didn't remember her dreams, if she did. She didn't even notice at first, because there was so much to do. She had learned the logistics of her father's—now Lord Ascot's—trading business, pored over ledgers and maps, mastered writing letters of business—at times, she'd felt like a hedgehog with its feet tied, able only to curl into a ball and await the feel of a hard thwack that would send her hurtling skyward toward an unknown destination. But that was only sometimes. Most of the time, the awareness that she needed to know all this before she could take the next step kept her focused on her studies.

The day she boarded _Wonder_, climbed to the prow, and turned her face toward the Orient, it was all worth it. She smelled adventure on the air, and her new trading ship had followed Absolem out of the harbor until she could no longer see the butterfly's blue wings.

A butterfly in November, heading out to sea, did not seem strange to Alice. She was sure it _was _Absolem, somehow, and in this unquestioned faith she set sail, first to Indonesia and ultimately to China. She hadn't been seasick, not at all. That first night at sea was the night she began to dream again, tucked cozily into her narrow berth and rocked by the motion of the waves beneath _Wonder's_ sturdy hull.

She was in a field of green grass and tiny blue flowers, atop a low hill. The sun shone bright, brighter than she had ever remembered, and warmed her in a way she'd never felt. Alice took a step forward, exulting in the feel of her bare toes in the grass. The sweet aroma of the little flowers and the dark, rich smell of earth made her nose twitch with delight. It was an April morning, Alice thought with sudden lucidity; and then just as suddenly she made herself stop thinking, for thinking was sure to ruin a dream as lovely as this. The sun was so very warm. Alice looked down, and was puzzled to notice that she was naked except for a kirtle of forget-me-nots twined about her waist. Her brow creased at this discovery, and she felt something move against it. Raising one hand, she felt another twist of flowers around her head.

Someone came up the hill, and Alice, wearing only a belt and crown of blue flowers that offered her no modesty whatsoever, turned to see who it was. The hat appeared first, and the rest of him followed: scarecrow figure in an odd jumble of clothes, a tangled mass of red hair, and those _eyes_. They were exactly as she remembered, intensely green and full of his soul and his life. He came to her without a pause. She smiled, and he laid her down in a bed of grass and flowers. The grass prickled her bare skin and she wriggled for a moment, then grew still and breathless as he touched her. One long-fingered hand went to her brow. The other touched her stomach, tracing the forget-me-nots that lay there. A belt and crown of flowers, that was all. The rest of her was naked and shameless before him. It was frightening. It was wanton. It was splendid.

He bent over her and the sun caught his hair, infusing it with red-gold flame so bright she could hardly bear to look; yet she could not stop looking. Even in the shadows the sun made of his face, his eyes still glowed with a green light all their own. Alice shifted beneath him again, the Hatter, whose name, she had learned, was Tarrant. His fingers moved gently to stroke the curve of her belly, the hollow of her hipbones, the dip of her navel. Her insides turned to liquid gold. His eyes never left her face, and she felt she could go on looking forever.

"Alice," he breathed, as his warm weight settled between her thighs. "Alice."

"Alice! Alice, my lady, do wake up."

Hettie, her English attendant, called once more, then rapped sharply on her bedchamber door. Alice opened her eyes as Hettie bustled in to open the shutters onto the Oriental dawn. It had been six years since that first voyage, and the dream had been the same every night. That morning, as on every other one, Alice rose obediently to wash and dress. Her fingers lingered at brow and hip as she toweled herself dry, until propriety overcame fantasy and Alice turned, with a little toss of her head as if to throw off the mantle of dream, toward her wardrobe. Today she clothed herself in a blue silk duster over a simple silver dress, allowing Hettie to fuss over the Mandarin collar as she pleased.

Downstairs, she and Hettie were joined by the rest of the household staff: two young women and a young man, all bowing and smiling. Alice greeted them in precise, careful Cantonese and sat down to break her fast with them all. She practiced the language with them, as she every morning. When they had all eaten, Alice descended from her apartments with a wave and set out for her dockside offices. The sun was a great red ball over the sea, making her squint. It lit the winding streets and hanging eaves of the waking city with flame.

It wasn't the scandalous nature of her dream that she minded so much, mused Alice that Thursday morning as she set off along the narrow, packed-dirt streets of Shanghai. What shamed her was that she felt not the least bit ashamed of dreaming so wantonly every night. Taking this one step further, she wondered if it made everything all right, to be ashamed of not being ashamed, or if she was only muddling up her thinking by allowing herself the luxury of absolution. Among the Hatter's last words to her had been, "You won't remember me." He had seemed so sure, so melancholy, and not at all comforted by her reassurance that she couldn't possibly forget him.

Alice grinned at the thought, in the wry sort of way that had become her habit lately. If only he knew just how impossible forgetting him had become. No, no, better that he didn't—whatever was she thinking? While she might talk idly of learning to fly, or smile to imagine women in trousers and men in dresses dancing a quadrille, she could scarcely speak to anyone about her dream. Especially not to the object of it.

So flustered by her own mind was she that Alice stumbled a little coming round the corner into the open air market that bordered the wharves. She had to swerve sharply to avoid running into a rickshaw man and his passenger, both of whom stared openly at her before zigzagging up into the narrow street from which she'd just emerged. Alice watched them go, entranced for a moment by the incongruous blend of awkwardness and grace in the rickshaw driver as maneuvered his burden. It reminded her of the way Tarrant moved when he ran, or fought, or danced.

Altogether too many things reminded her of the Hatter, these days. Alice turned away, resolved not to fret over the impossible. Instead, she drifted through the market, pausing here or there to examine a stack of fruit, a selection of clay figurines of the Buddha with his little hat of snails, or a line of plucked chickens hanging by their necks. People still started at her appearance, but Alice was used to that and returned their lowered gazes with a smile or a curtsey or a formal hello in Cantonese. Her blond curls tumbled freely down her back, very different from the tight, elaborate knots of the Chinese ladies' silky black hair. She was a yellow-haired giant amidst a small, dark, lissome people; every bit as out of place as she'd been back in England.

The difference was that she knew who she was, now. She moved with an unconscious grace born of confidence and curiosity. Even after spending most of the past six years in China, Alice found that the courteous people, stepped-pagoda architecture, and culture steeped in ancestral tradition still fascinated her with each new day. She'd built diplomatic relations while trade with Lord Ascot's company burgeoned from its ports in Shanghai and Hong Kong all the way back through Sumatra, Papua New Guinea, Jakarta, India, Capetown, and home to England. Tea, spices, silk, and grain, among other goods, shipped across half the globe twelve months out of the year, thanks largely to Alice's efforts in the Orient.

It was only recently, as winter loosened its grip on the coast and moved back toward the vast unknown interior of China, that Alice had begun to feel restless in her own skin again. She had accomplished so much—everything her father had envisioned, and beyond, she had helped bring about. Perhaps what she needed was another journey, to feel the open air on her skin again. Yes, she thought firmly, as she paid for a dozen ripe lychees for her lunch, that was what she needed. It had been much too long since she'd seen her mother and Margaret. Why, baby Katharine would be the same age now as Alice herself had been the first time she visited Underland. Wonderland, she'd called it then; Absolem had said so.

There. She couldn't get away from it. Alice accepted her bag of fruit and moved off, threading her way through the increasingly crowded market. Every thought in her head seemed to be bringing her back to Underland today. It was likely to drive her mad. Well, madder than she already was, which would do more harm than good on this particular Thursday. She needed to focus, because she had a meeting that morning with a delegation of cloth manufacturers and must convince them that the distant English aristocracy was dissatisfied with the job that British factories were making of their wonderful silk. It seemed that most of the ladies of the Ton were demanding silks dyed with the rich hues and prints of Chinese design.

Bless the nobility and its everlasting and immodest greed. If Alice was successful today, she could ensure a most lucrative future for Ascot. Unfortunately, Alice knew this particular clothmaker by reputation. Its wily masters would not be easily convinced to export the finished product, because to do so risked the Europeans discovering the secrets of their dye processes.

By the time she had climbed to Ascot Trading Company's offices that overlooked Shanghai harbor, Alice had managed to throw off most of her restless imaginings and was able to focus on the job at hand. She received the three delegates from the manufacturer herself, rather than asking her secretaries to do it, and offered them Chinese gunpowder tea with English biscuits. Seated round the teak table in her office, with a red and gold silk tapestry from their own textile mill hanging on the wall behind them and a lovely view of the harbor with its tall ships before them, the businessmen gradually relaxed from open suspicion to cautious geniality.

Alice brought up her request with deftness, deference, and quiet directness. Words that began with _D_, she thought briefly, but tossed her head a little and got on with it. At the end of two hours' time, she had negotiated a sample five hundred bales of silk dyed in four colors to accompany the two thousand bales of raw silk in _Wonder's_ hold on her next export run. A price was agreed, the bargain struck, and Alice accompanied the now-genial company to the door, smiling graciously but feeling uncharacteristically dissatisfied. Usually such a diplomatic success left her invigorated, refreshed, ready for the next challenge. Today, she only felt hollow.

Perhaps she was hungry. Informing her secretaries that she intended to take some air with her lunch, Alice let herself down the long flights of stairs to the docks and strolled up and down the harbor, slowly eating her lychees and thinking hard. She had made it a practice always to be as honest with herself as she was with the people around her—more so, in fact, because of course no one would believe the truth of the journey she'd taken twice to Underland. She had told Margaret, after her first visit, but they had both been children then. And even then, Margaret had been old enough to believe that Alice's tale was merely the product of a dream. The look on her face had been a bit wistful, as if she'd been wishing for her own childhood back.

In any case, Margaret had soon grown up and married Lowell. Alice's mouth quirked to imagine how her proper Victorian sister would react to her _present_ dream, and vowed at once never to tell her. It would shock the poor dear half catatonic. However, when Alice thought about it, it seemed exceedingly odd that she had for nearly six years accepted the fact of her nightly dream of the Hatter without question, until this particular Thursday in April, when she couldn't seem to get it out of her head, when all thoughts led back to … to Underland (she refused to think, _him_).

She wondered what day it was, on the Oraculum.

She wondered why freshly-brewed, exotic green Chinese tea never quite tasted as good as the lukewarm Darjeeling she'd once sipped out of a chipped cup in the unlikely company of a hare, a hatter, and a dormouse. Mad as a box of frogs, the lot of them. More than a match for her own madness. As a little girl, she'd been indignant by their failure to explain things sensibly to her. On the cusp of womanhood, she'd been far more comfortable in their company than in that of her aristocratic English peers.

She felt suddenly lonely, and wondered if Underland, at this moment, missed her as much as she missed it.

Alice spat a black lychee pit expertly over a piling-top and into the sea, where it landed with a distinctive _plop_ amid the sound of waves slapping at idle hulls. A child disembarked from one of the flat-bottomed junks tethered a few berths up. Alice paused at the piling, running her hands over the rough, salt-splintered wood, and watched the boy expertly tie the junk's hawser to a cleat on the pier. The child's quick, sure movements put her in mind of the only time she'd seen Tarrant Hightopp working at his trade. He'd been happy then, or nearly so, his bloodstained and bandaged fingers moving with deft assurance. Alice had destroyed his illusion by reminding him that he was a prisoner of the Red Queen.

That was the moment she knew that the Hatter, mad as he was, did not wish to be so.

Pained by the memory, Alice closed her eyes. Fooling herself would do no good. Once she saw the silk venture through and had the cargo safely loaded, she would return to England for a nice long visit with her mother, her sister, and her nephew and niece. She'd stay a spell with Lord and Lady Ascot; after all, she had much to discuss with the kindly, shrewd old man who had become her mentor. She might even inquire as to how Hamish was getting on. No doubt he was far better off than he'd have been marrying her; Alice's unconventional mind would quite have upset his digestion.

Perhaps, during her stay at Ascot, she would stroll the grounds and spy out the hedge maze for evidence of overlarge rabbit holes. After all, if she'd gotten to Underland twice that way, what was to stop her doing so a third time? She _had_ promised to return, one day. It was possible that the time was upon her at last. She had little more that needed doing at Ascot, unless she wanted to become filthy rich—and she didn't, not really. Her aim had been only to see her father's dream through. She had done that. She had no plans to marry, and at twenty-five was nearly too old for such consideration anyway. A quarter-century of life had gone by in a wonderful way. Yes, it was time to take the next step.

Feeling a little bit better for having resolved her direction, however impossible it seemed, Alice turned back toward the office. She nearly fell over the child from the junk, who appeared to have materialized directly behind her and was now staring up at her with a mixed expression of uncertainty and affrontery at being nearly run over. Perplexed, Alice peered down at him. He was a graceful child, with large dark almond eyes and a cap of black hair. He was a beauty, too, except for the vivid scar that bisected his left cheek. Pity and curiosity moved her to kneel before him, and she opened her mouth to ask if he was all right.

Boldly, the lad stepped up until his nose was inches from her face. Alice blinked; her words died in her throat at his unexpectedly fierce expression. His hands curled into fists at his sides, as if he was gathering his courage. Then, to add to her surprise, the boy whispered in perfect English, "To get back to Underland, you must pass through the gates of horn and ivory."

Alice sat back on her heels, stunned. "What did you say?"

The boy was trembling now; all his bravado seemed to have deserted him. His eyes darted wildly from side to side. "Just that, miss," he replied in an agonized murmur, as if speaking were painful for him. "Find the gates of horn and ivory. He is waiting on the other side." The boy shook as if from palsy. His eyes clouded, then cleared, and he gasped suddenly and fell to his knees on the tar-blackened wharf. Alice, dumbstruck, reached out to help him, but he looked up suddenly and recoiled from her. He seemed confused as he scrambled to his feet and, throwing her a look of terror, bolted away down the busy wharf, threading through sailors and stevedores until he was lost in the throng.

Alice was too dazed to even call out to him. She knelt on the wharf and tried to keep her hands from trembling. After a moment, she recovered enough to get to her feet. Then she ran pell-mell, laughing from the absurd joy of life in all its delightful unexpectedness, until she reached the company offices where she clung panting to the stair-rail, half laughing, half weeping. Pass through the gates of horn and ivory to reach Underland. He was waiting. Underland. _He_.

Somehow, the Hatter had gotten a message to her.


	3. Zwischenzug

_And we shall play a game of chess,_

_Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door._

_T. S. Eliot_

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So distracted was Alice after her strange encounter with the child that she could scarcely focus on her work that afternoon. She gave it up for lost around three o'clock and left for the day, waving almost giddily to her staff as she ran down the steps and out into the Shanghai streets. It seemed to her that a honey-gold glow hung about the city, sweet-smelling and laden with promise. She floated more than walked, too keyed up to go home and feeling, on the whole, stifled, even in this vibrant city. Alice's feet wandered where they would, while her mind was off on an even more fantastic journey. Her heart beat high and a girlish smile played around her mouth, but it was not a smile for any earthly creature. Her eyes told her vaguely when she was about to run into a wall or a pedestrian or a horse-cart; but she didn't really see any of these things.

Deeper and deeper into Shanghai's thoroughfares she wandered, half lost in imagining what her return to Underland would be like and half fretting over how to kill the time until she got there. "Kill time," she mused to herself, and remembered the Hatter mentioning, when they'd last met, that he'd been obliged to kill time until her return. She hadn't been certain at the time, but she'd wondered whether he'd meant it literally. After all, there had been that business with the pocket-watches beginning to tick again, which had quite startled the March Hare (even though Alice suspected that the March Hare would be startled by the sun rising each morning).

At any rate, it now appeared that their positions were reversed. But what to do? It would take a fortnight at least for her to put her affairs in order and load the cargo into _Wonder's_ hold for what, Alice was certain, would be her last voyage home from China.

She was so distracted by all these thoughts that she nearly missed the curious little shop. In fact, it was a marvel that she noticed it at all, for it was the sort of shop that would be difficult to find even if one were looking for it: all made of dark wood, with a narrow door and narrower windows, squeezed into what amounted to little more than an alleyway between two larger, more glamorous businesses—a restaurant and a tapestry-maker. It was the tapestry shop that truly caught Alice's eye, at first, and she stopped in her tracks to gaze at the wooden display rack outside the shop's red-painted doors.

"Now that is really a remarkable coincidence," said Alice, and frowned, and stepped closer to be sure she wasn't imagining things, for she knew she had a particularly strong imagination, even at the ripe old age of twenty-five when such things just weren't done by normal people. Nevertheless, the tapestry on display continued to be that of a white rabbit in a blue waistcoat, surrounded by cherry blossoms and holding a gold pocket-watch up to its long ears. The brilliance of the colors and the quality of the weave were so lifelike that Alice took another step forward, frowning in concentration, and put out a tentative finger to touch the tapestry.

At that moment, a flash of movement to her left caught her eye. She straightened up guiltily, not wishing to be caught fingering wares she'd no intent of buying, and looked to the side where she'd seen the movement. There was nothing there, but Alice now noticed the small dark shop. It looked rather careworn and weary, squeezed between its grander brothers. She frowned up at it, then gave a small start. Above the doorway, a small plain sign hung from a rusty bracket. It was the only sign she'd seen in English in all her time in the Orient. That in itself was unlikely, but as Alice stood staring rather dazedly up at the words it bore, it occurred to her that unlikely was not a strong enough description. This was the second impossible thing that had happened to her today.

The sign read, in small, nondescript black letters:

_**Hatta & Haigha, Messengers**_

It was fortunate that Alice believed in impossible things. Once she'd gathered enough sense to move, she marched straight up to the shabby little door, and pushed it open.

The first thing she saw was a black chicken, which flapped away from the door in alarm and set up a racket of clucking as it darted away into the shadows deeper in the shop. The place was a maze of free-standing shelves the height of her shoulders. Each shelf was honeycombed with dozens of cubbyholes, most of them empty, but a few containing rolls of parchment so ancient it looked as if they'd crumble to dust at the slightest touch. In the absence of the chicken, the place was silent as a tomb save for the distinct ticking of a clock. Tentatively, Alice called out, "Hello?" She stepped over the threshold, allowing the door to close softly behind her.

No one replied to her call. Alice went over to one of the shelves and ran an absent finger along the top. It was thick with dust; her finger left a trail of blond teak-wood that gleamed dully in the dim light that filtered through the windows. Wrinkling her nose, she skirted that shelf and ducked between two more, emerging finally in a small open space at the back of the shop. Against the curtained wall stood a rickety writing desk. In the center of the desk lay two objects. One was a flat gray box perhaps two feet along a side and two inches high, and the other was a small study-clock. This last was most interesting to Alice, for it was the only thing in the shop not covered by dust. On the contrary, the clock's curved mahogany body was beautifully polished, its brass innards gleaming through an etched-glass panel. It counted off the seconds with a strong, healthy, confident sort of tick.

Just as Alice was bending to examine the clock more closely, the curtain behind the writing desk twitched aside and a small figure flew out of it, screeching, "Don't, don't touch it! That's not for you!" The voice was undeniably English; cockney London, in fact. Startled, Alice drew back. Glaring up at her from the other side of the desk was a wizened, moth-eaten old man wearing a mangy fur hat and what had once probably been a dapper black suit. The hat was Russian in style, with overlong ear flaps of brown and white fur. It sat askew on his head. His limbs twitched from time to time, and he had enormous round eyes with a dazed sort of expression, and protruding teeth. He clutched the black chicken under one arm. Looking at it, Alice thought the poor creature had a resigned sort of expression on its beaky face. This was not how Alice expected a chicken to behave. She wasn't sure how one _ought_ to behave, not being an expert on chickens, but she'd have thought at least that it might struggle or try to flap a bit.

"What are you staring at?" The old man snapped testily.

"The—the chicken, sir," answered Alice politely. "It startled me when I came in. I was just wondering about it."

The old man stared suspiciously at the chicken, as if wondering how it had gotten under his arm. "Blasted thing," he muttered. "'Twas s'posed to be a raven. I ask you."

Alice stiffened. She glanced at the writing desk, then at the chicken. "Haigha and Hatta," she murmured. Her gaze sharpened on the strange old man. She felt a little dizzy; things were happening so fast, it was all she could do to keep up with them. Tentatively, she asked, "Are you...Haigha?" She pronounced it as a Londoner would, with an _r _at the end of the word. She stared hard at the long ear flaps of his fur hat.

"Forward march!" cried the old man at once, and flapped around her three times, waving his free hand in time to some lunatic music Alice couldn't hear. "_This_ is for you," he went on, stopping as suddenly as he'd begun, right beside the old writing desk. With astonishing speed and agility, he whisked the box out from under the clock with his free hand. Alice cried out in alarm and reached to save the beautiful clock, but after a thump and the tiniest wobble, the timepiece righted itself on the table and went on ticking as if nothing had happened. The old man glared at her. "I told you not to touch it. That's the Synclock, that is, and if either of you touch it, well," he broke off with a snort. "This whole gamble will be for naught."

"Either of who?" Alice looked over her shoulder. "I'm the only one here. Besides you, of course." She eyed the chicken dubiously, but decided not to mention its presence lest the situation get even further out of hand. "Who else did you mean?"

He waved off her question with a twitch of his white sideburns, clasping the box awkwardly to his chest with one hand. "Yes yes, but the clock's not the only one here. It's here, but it's also not here, do you see?"

"Yes," said Alice, who didn't see at all, but could see the conversation easily going round in circles if she kept asking questions.

The old man beamed. "Clever, you are. Coming along nicely, I said you would. Now then, all you have to do is open the box and solve the riddle." With a flourish, he held the box out to her. It wobbled dangerously in his grasp, and Alice took it quickly with both hands, lest it fall.

"The riddle?" she asked sharply. "What riddle? Who are you, exactly?" She'd quite forgotten her resolution to ask no more questions, which proved to be a mistake. The old man shook his head frantically, clutched the chicken in both hands (it let out a squawk at last), and reached for the wall-curtain. Quick as a flash, Alice moved to block his way. "Oh, no you don't. I want some answers. You're from Underland, aren't you? Don't I know you?"

"Shhhh!" The old man's eyes went wide in desperation. "Yes, Alice, hush, Alice dear, or they'll hear us!"

Alice was so shocked to hear him speak her name that she was for the moment unable to answer. The old man seized the opportunity of her silence, stepped up on tiptoe, and whispered, "There is only one way back to Underland: through the gates of horn and ivory. You already know that, don't you?" At her wide-eyed nod, he continued in a rush, his words stumbling over themselves in their haste to get from his mouth to her ears. "It is not what you think, Alice. Danger lies waiting for you beyond those gates. You must be ready to meet it." His eyes, enormous beneath the brown-furred hat, rolled to the quietly ticking clock. "I haven't much time. I have a message from those who love you, and those who hate you, in Underland." He glared pleadingly at her, as if willing her to understand. "Some of it's the same, and some of it isn't. You've got to figure it out."

Alice frowned in confusion, but the intensity of the odd creature's gaze was so compelling that she bent down beside him. "I'll do my best," she whispered.

His whiskers tickled her earlobe. "The message, Alice," he murmured. "Solve the riddle. When is the width of a circle like a dessert? Put the answer on the board, and you will come through the gates to Underland. Once you do, you must be ready for anything." His whiskers moved against her ear, tickling it; he was shaking his head. "He will try to meet you when the Synclock strikes true, but it's a tricky business. That day is not yet foretold."

Abruptly, the old man pulled back, leaving Alice standing in confusion with the box held tightly in her hands. "An' that's all you'll get from me, or I'm not a nun," he announced loudly. With an awkward bow, he turned and scuttled back through the curtain.

"Wait a minute!" Alice tucked the box under one arm and reached out for him, but he was gone, and she was left with a fistful of musty black curtain. She yanked the curtain aside, determined to pursue him and get some straight answers.

The curtain opened onto a solid stone wall.

Alice left the shop the way she had come, hugging the flat box to her chest. She allowed her feet to find their own way back to her apartments. The sun was setting when she arrived, but she took little heed of that or of her servants' greetings. Instead, she went straight up to her bedchamber, locked the door, and set the gray box on the duvet cover. She looked at it for a long while, anticipating what she'd find when she opened it, building up the suspense until she could stand it no longer. At last, with something like reverence, she lifted off the lid.

The thing inside fit so snugly that Alice had a bit of a trying time to wedge her fingers in enough to pry it out. It was heavier than it had seemed inside the box. Once she'd got it free, she swept the box aside and laid the thing down on her bed. It was a chessboard, perfectly symmetrical along each side, banded by a thin strip of ebony. The inlaid squares were red and white and fit so closely that the thinnest knife blade would not have fit between them. The white squares were creamy in color, and upon closer inspection, Alice noticed minute striations in the material and knew it for ivory; she'd seen a lot of it traded during her stops in India and Africa.

The red squares were harder to puzzle out. They looked at first like wood, but there was no grain to be seen; instead, each square had a faintly layered look beneath the glossy surface. Alice peered closer, forehead wrinkled in concentration. Her thoughts strayed back to the two cryptic messages she'd received earlier that day, from the little boy and the old man. Both had said essentially the same thing: to return to Underland, she had to pass through the gates of horn and ivory.

Horn and ivory, thought Alice. The white squares on her chessboard were ivory. Did that make the red squares horn? She decided that it must. Come to think of it, she'd seen polished horn before, from ibex and water buffalo, and they had the same scalloped, wavy look to them even when the texture had been honed smooth. But how, she wondered, could a chessboard be a gate? When a circle's width became a dessert? When was that?

Alice lifted the chessboard to see if there was anything underneath. There was only another thin strip of ebony, with four squares of felt glued at the corners, forming the base of the board. She shook the board, but could hear nothing rattling inside. In any case, it was too heavy to be hollow, being only an inch thick. A glance at the box assured her that nothing else was inside. This, then, was her gift from Underland, her key to solving the riddle and returning to where she most wanted to be: a chessboard without any pieces.

How perfectly horrid, thought Alice in a fit of pique. A mad gift from a mad land. The question was, was she mad enough to figure it out? The crazy old messenger had mentioned a terrible danger. After turning his words over and over in her mind, however, Alice had decided to disregard that. It could be nothing more than scare tactics from some unknown enemy. Besides, she had faced down the Bandersnatch during her last visit, believing the whole thing to be a dream, and come away with nothing more than a scratch. She'd slain the Jabberwocky. "And nothing," she muttered aloud, "Could possibly be more dangerous to me than that."

She ate no supper, and didn't get any sleep that night, either. She spent most of the night at her desk, mapping out various chess strategies, calculating the length of the board along a side, the size of each square, the surface area with and without the ebony border. The riddle the old man had given her turned over and over in her mind: When is the width of a circle like a dessert? When, when, when, thought Alice. The pencil dropped from her hand. She thought of time: time passing, time erasing childhood memories but not adulthood ones, killing time, tea-time. She heard again the ticking of the Synclock, precisely measuring moments that were here, and not here. Someone would meet her when the Synclock struck true, whenever that was. Who? The messenger—Haigha?—had said "he". Who was he? Bayard? The Hatter? She must not hope too much, but go forward trying to solve the riddle.

Light filtered in at her window. Somewhere beyond, perhaps in the market, a cock crowed. Alice lifted her head wearily, vexed at finding no answers. Put the answer on the board, the old man had said. He must have meant the chessboard. Alice stared at it. Its squares yielded nothing but a blank symmetry.

* * *

_Author's note: In chess, "Zwischenzug" refers to a move in which a player, instead of making the expected move, makes another one that poses an immediate threat that the opponent must answer, then makes the expected move._


	4. Gambit

"_To what end," said Candide, "Was the world formed?"_

"_To make us mad," said Martin._

_ - Voltaire_

_

* * *

  
_

For a fortnight, Alice went about her days as she had for the past six years. At night, she studied the chessboard and turned the problem of the riddle over and over in her mind. When she found sleep, she dreamed of the Hatter on the hill, his skin hot against her skin, his wild eyes holding hers, pleading with her to find her way.

It was enough to make her scream. Suddenly, the life she had freely created for herself felt as stifling as the patterned, dull, artificial one she'd left behind in England. After an interminable two weeks that frayed Alice's patience and, she felt, her sanity, to the splitting point, she boarded _Wonder _at last, accompanied by a hold filled with silk and tea.

As was her habit whenever the trading vessel sailed out of or into harbor, Alice stood at the prow, looking out to sea. She felt her spirits begin to lift as the sights, smells, and sounds of busy Shanghai dropped slowly astern, leaving only the clean beauty and strength of the ocean ahead.

Because of all the odd things that had happened to her, she was not surprised when a blue butterfly alighted on her shoulder and rested there, flexing its wings in a lazy, superior sort of way. She had not seen Absolem since her first journey, but had unquestionable faith that he was visiting her again. "Come to see me off?" she asked quietly, smiling at the lovely insect. "Or guiding my way?"

The butterfly extended its tiny proboscis to taste her collar, then climbed delicately up the loose strands of her hair until she could feel the lightest brush of its wings on her earlobe. Alice held very still.

"There was once a Chinese philosopher who fell asleep," said Absolem's soft voice in her ear, "And dreamed he was a butterfly. The dream was so vivid that when he woke, he was no longer certain whether he was a man dreaming he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was a man."

Alice could have skipped about the deck for joy of hearing her old friend's voice again. "It _is_ you!" she murmured in delight. "But that's very cryptic, Absolem. What does it mean?"

The butterfly gave the smallest of small sighs; Alice could hardly feel its breath. "It means, stupid girl," (here Alice grinned again) "That it is the end of this life for you, just as it has been for me. You must wake into the next one by passing through a dream."

Before Alice could speak again, Absolem had lifted away from her and was being borne higher and higher by the currents of sea air, until he became a speck of dark blue against the sky, then was swallowed by it entirely.

He always did talk the most awful nonsense, thought Alice. Wake into the next life by passing through a dream, indeed. Still, she was wise enough to know that all his other nonsense had come to pass whenever they'd spoken. She'd do well to heed his words, and watch for them to come to pass. The trouble was, they made no more sense to her right then than the dessert riddle did.

Each night of the journey, after mess with the crew, Alice returned to her cabin and the horn and ivory chessboard. During the interminable months of the voyage that ate up the summer, she made no progress toward solving the riddle. When the English coast was finally sighted, after a stormy Channel crossing, she resolved to set the board, and the problem, aside for the duration of her visit. It would do no good to worry her family with a half-mad obsession. She packed the chessboard into the bottom of her steamer trunk, put on her blue overcoat against the chill English autumn and her best daughterly smile, and disembarked to greet her family.

There were business meetings and garden parties, old friends to meet, new shops to peruse, a much grown nephew and niece to play with and tell stories to, and still Alice felt alienated from the familiar bustle of London society. With each new conversation, she felt a sense of wrapping-up, of preparing herself to take the next step. She was no closer to solving the riddle or the chessboard that haunted her waking thoughts, or of returning to the Hatter who haunted her dreaming ones. Still, she felt that something had to change soon, some break in her fortunes must be made. Otherwise, she'd end up raving.

She tried very hard not to notice the fact that nobody from Underland had come calling on her since her return. Apparently the Synclock had not reached its critical hour to strike true. Or perhaps she had misunderstood Haigha's garbled message entirely.

After exchanging several letters with Lord Ascot detailing her recent ventures, Alice took the carriage ride alone to his country estate to offer her resignation. She was ready; she'd been in England nearly a month, and it was fast getting on toward winter. The process of handing the reins of her duties over to the next bunch of eager entrepreneurs was well begun. Alice had no doubt that Lord Ascot knew exactly what she was doing, and had invited her alone to tea that rainy October afternoon to have her intentions out in the open.

It hadn't escaped her notice that, should she happen to solve the two messengers' riddle before she had the opportunity to meet with Lord Ascot, she might well disappear as abruptly into Underland as she had twice before, with no time to tie up any loose ends. She was not frightened about leaving the company with no clear path back to Underland; she'd means enough to live generously for a while, and in the absence of any other driving force, she could apply all her energies to the problem of the circle's width and the dessert.

The carriage rolled to a stop at the end of the long, sweeping drive. Alice stepped down into a fine, misty rain. She wore silk trousers beneath her overcoat, no corset, and a lace cravat at her neck. Lord Ascot, her friend and employer, was standing at the foyer, waiting to greet her. He had grown grayer with the years, his face more gaunt but his belly more comfortable. On the whole, Alice thought he looked well, and said so. At that, he beamed and told her he'd her to thank for it.

"Come inside, dear girl," he said, offering his arm. "Tea's nearly done, and there are hot biscuits to take the chill off the day." He led the way into his drawing-room, with its fine view of the gardens and hedge maze, and a fire crackling in the hearth. He and Alice settled in comfortable armchairs near the mullioned windows while serving-men laid the tea things out on the low table between them. Alice smiled when she saw the cups and saucers; Lord Ascot noticed and nodded at her, chuckling. "Your gift last Christmas has been remarked upon by the Queen herself, did you know? Never has she seen such fine porcelain. She offered to take it off my hands."

Alice laughed. "And you had the audacity to say no, didn't you, sir?"

"On the contrary," Lord Ascot huffed. "I offered to sell it to her right then, and named a price I thought would make parting with such a dear gift bearable." His eyes twinkled. "When she heard that, the Queen refused. She said she could import it more cheaply from China. I answered, 'Your Highness, that can be arranged.'"

"Oh, you are a rogue!" exclaimed Alice, and picked up her steaming cup. The tea was smoky Lapsang Souchong; she closed her eyes to savor it, but her mood was flattened the next instant when she remembered that she'd come for a reason much more solemn than her carefree manner suggested. Carefully, she set the fine cup back on its saucer.

Lord Ascot raised shaggy eyebrows. "It's from your cargo; surely there is nothing the matter with the tea?"

"It's delicious, sir," Alice reassured him with a smile. "But there is something I must tell you."

Ascot adjusted his smoking jacket around his ample midsection and waved a half-eaten biscuit at her. "By all means, Alice. You know you can always speak to me. What's troubling you?"

That was the thing she liked best about Lord Ascot. He saw more than he appeared to, and came right to the point with no fretting over silly things like sensibilities. Her smile deepened in appreciation, even if it was tinged with nostalgia. Placing her hands on the chair's velvet arms, Alice took a deep breath. "It's time for me to move on, sir," she said quietly.

For a long moment, the Lord said nothing. He contemplated the view outside the window, chewing thoughtfully on his biscuit and making his mutton-chop sideburns flex. He studied Alice with a gaze that was kind but shrewd, which she returned with quiet gravity. At last he said, "You've seen your father's intentions through, Alice, and I daresay more besides. What's left is only, and as much, as your dreams." He paused, and although he must have seen her start at his uncanny mention of her dreams, he didn't mention it. "I had hoped that one day, when I'm gone, you would take over the company. However, that's not the only reason I'll be sorry to see you go." His voice grew gruff. "You're very dear to me, Alice."

"And I'm very fond of you, sir," Alice responded at once, to allow him time to recover from his rare display of emotion. "It was my intent to stay with the company forever." She bit her lip. "However, the company has grown so much, and we have so many talented traders, now, all of them wanting to move in on the new territories...maybe it's time that someone else took a fresh look at our routes and goods. I've been at it six years, and you and I both agree that change is good."

While she spoke, Lord Ascot watched her kindly, but there was a good deal of shrewdness in his gaze. "Those are all very good points. You're right, of course. And yet, I feel that all of those excellent reasons are not your real reason." He lifted his teacup to his mouth as if he had all the time in the world.

Alice shifted in her seat. "While—while I was arranging the new silk deal in Shanghai," she began, picking at nonexistent loose threads on the chair arm, "Something happened that I can't ignore." She did not meed the Lord's eyes, and hoped he wouldn't ask her what, for she'd no idea how to explain her suspicion that she'd met the March Hare and some other unknown agent from Underland, and that both of them had given her clues about how to get back.

Lord Ascot seemed to sense her reluctance. "At the risk of being too bold," he said gently, "Will you indulge an old man in his curiosity, and tell me what you intend to do next?"

Alice hesitated. She couldn't possibly tell Lord Ascot about Underland. When she'd confessed her first visit there to Margaret, her sister had thought she'd made it all up and remarked what a vivid imagination six-year-old Alice had. But now that it came down to it, she couldn't lie to this man who had trusted her for the mere fact of being her father's daughter, and whom she'd come to love nearly as much as a father. She couldn't tell him about Underland, not in the same way she'd told Margaret as a child, but perhaps she could tell him _something_. Alice steepled her fingers and met his eyes solemnly. "Do you remember the day Hamish proposed to me, the day I became your apprentice?" she asked.

Lord Ascot chuckled. "How could I forget? You left the poor boy, and all of us, standing at the gazebo for nearly twenty minutes. When you returned, you were scratched and filthy, and yet it was as if something had come alive in you." He smiled at the memory. "You refused Hamish, saying he was the wrong man for you with such certainty that I wondered whether you had met the right one during your … disappearance. And then you called every one of us to order, and took me to task about my own business. Precocious young lady," he finished in a fond growl.

Alice dug her fingers into the plush stuffing of the armchair. "What if I told you that I hadn't been gone for twenty minutes, but for three days? That I had met people who had changed the way I thought, or rather, confirmed that it was all right for me to behave the way I thought, because they behaved the same way? Would you say I was mad?"

The Lord studied her a long moment before he answered. "You don't seem at all mad," he said slowly. "You seem to believe it, even though I was there, and what you claim is impossible. You were absolutely gone less than half an hour."

Alice dimpled. "My father used to say—"

"—That he often believed in as many as six impossible things before breakfast. Yes. I remember." Lord Ascot shook his head. "Alice, dear, you've convinced me in the past that the impossible is possible. I'd be a hypocrite to doubt you now. So, then, do you intend to return to these people you met somewhere in the mysterious depths of my garden?"

He was teasing her, Alice knew; and she let him, knowing that it was the easiest way for him to accept this small part of the incredible truth about what had happened to her that day. "Yes, I do," she told him. "Except that I can't figure out how to get back. I need time to think about it, to solve the problem, so that I can take the next step."

Lord Ascot nodded. "If you go to this most unconventional … place, will you be able to return?"

Alice frowned. "I don't know," she answered slowly. "I was able to before. Twice. Once in your garden, and once as a little girl, although I didn't remember it at the time, and thought it was a dream."

"Three times." His voice was distant, contemplative. "Maybe the third time is a charm. Maybe not. Maybe it's the third time with loopholes, like those decimals we always have to round off on the ledgers, eh?" He snorted, and Alice grinned at him, remembering when he'd taught her book-keeping and she'd had the most dreadful time deciding what to do with the leftover decimals in order to balance the reports, for they could often mean the difference between profit and loss for a given month.

Lord Ascot was watching her keenly again. Alice picked up her teacup and took a long swallow. Her employer and friend nodded. "Yes, there is something different about you today, as well. I think you've come full circle, Alice. Whatever your next move is, you'll be ready. Though I confess I shall miss you." He smiled, a little sadly. "You must write if you can."

Full circle, thought Alice. Decimals, and circles, whizzed through her mind, forming and re-shaping themselves. There was something about circles and decimals...

Her fingers loosened about her precious cup, and it slipped. Alice had just enough wits to place it back onto the saucer with both hands, clumsily, splashing hot tea onto her fingers but not feeling it. _When is the width of a circle like a dessert?_

"Pie," she gasped.

Lord Ascot, who had half risen to assist her, furrowed his brows. "Beg pardon?"

With an effort, Alice focused on his face. "Lord Ascot," she said breathlessly, "I think you've just given me the answer. Oh, thank you!" She rose from her seat; a confused Lord rose with her. Alice turned this way and that in agitation. "Oh sir, forgive me, but I must go. Thank you, ever so much. I can see it now." She seized her mentor's hand in both of hers, lifted it to her lips, and gave it a quick kiss, her eyes sparkling up at him with pure joy. Then she was gone, down the hall and out into the rain, which was by now coming down much harder. Alice ran to her carriage and breathlessly ordered the driver back to London at all haste.

Lord Ascot stood in the shelter of his foyer and watched her go until the rain closed about her carriage like a curtain. "Fairfarren, Alice," he whispered half to himself, then frowned at his use of such an odd word. Wherever had he heard that before? As he turned to go back to his interrupted tea, and to brood over which of the eager young journeymen he'd send back to China in Alice's place, he caught a flash of white out of the corner of his eye, moving swiftly toward the hedge maze in his rain-drenched garden. When he peered closer, however, there was nothing there.

The journey back to her family's home in London was interminable. Alice spent it chewing at her lip, staring out at the wintry rain; or chewing at a pencil nub as she wrote feverishly in her memorandum-book. The ivory and horn chessboard burned in her mind, along with the answer to the riddle: the width of a circle was its diameter. That diameter traveled around the circle 3.14159 times, nearly exactly—or 3.14 times when one rounded down the decimals. It was the constant _Pi_, used by architects and mathematicians to determine the circumferences and areas of circles.

With the riddle solved, all that remained was for Alice to fit that answer to the chessboard somehow, and then she should be able to enter the gates of horn and ivory and return to Underland. But how to do it? A chessboard was square. Ought she to draw a circle that touched each of the board's four sides, or should she make many small circles, one inside each chess square? Round and round her thoughts chased themselves. She'd only be able to find the answer once this eternal journey ended and she made it back to her mother's house.

The carriage arrived at last. Alice scarcely took the time to thank the driver than she was splashing through the puddles that lay ankle deep on the cobbles, reaching for the iron rings to open the front doors of the manor. "Mother," she called down the hall as she removed her overcoat and hung it from one of the richly-carved pegs on the wall. There was no answer; the hall had an empty sort of feel, and the gas lights were all turned down halfway, so that the other end lay in darkness.

Quickly, Alice scrubbed her fingers through her wet hair, then patted it absently into place. She could still hear the rain falling outside, although it was muffled by the solid walls of the great house. "Mother!" she called again, and made her way along the parquet floors toward the drawing room. It was empty; the servants had left for the night, although the reading-lamp was turned up and there was a banked fire glowing on the hearth. Alice looked around the room and spotted a letter on the credenza, addressed to her in her mother's hand. She took it up and scanned the contents swiftly. Her mother had gone calling on friends in Hampstead and Alice was not to fret if she did not return that evening. The rain might delay her.

Alice set the letter down with a sinking heart. How, she wondered, would she be able to bear waiting another whole day to say goodbye to her mother? The riddle was beating insistently in her mind, lending her imagination wings. She could nearly smell the half-forgotten air of the gardens of Underland, see the rocking-horse-flies and the snap-dragon-flies doing battle under a stormy sky, taste the awful flavor of pishsalver, and feel the caroming, half-mad excitement of sitting to tea with the March Hare and jealous Mallymkun, and the Hatter. Alice could almost see his green eyes, could almost hear his whispered "Fairfarren, Alice" in her ear at the moment when she'd been both terrified of and hoping for a kiss...

Alice shook off the reverie with a little toss of her head. Dreaming would do her no good; hadn't Absolem advised her to enter her next life by passing through a dream? Maybe that was what he'd meant—that she must stop merely dreaming about Underland and make it a reality. She had the tools to do it. Yes, that was it. Resolutely, Alice turned from the drawing room and went up the steps two at a time, lifting her sodden skirts above her ankles to be sure she wouldn't trip.

Once in the sanctity of her bedchamber, Alice latched the door behind her, lit the two sconce-lamps on either side of the door, and rushed to her steamer trunk. She flung clothing out of it with no regard for neatness, and at last pulled the chessboard free, wrapped in a length of silk to protect it from being bashed around. Almost reverently, she stripped the cloth away, and set the board in the center of her floor, where she stood looking down at it with a creased brow.

"At least," she said to herself, "It can't hurt to draw out the design. Then I'll know if I'm on the right track. I can say goodbye to Mother tomorrow, and be on my way once I've explained things. After all, Lord Ascot didn't seem particularly shocked. She'll be all right." Even as she spoke, Alice was aware that her words were little more than justification. She was a woman grown now, and had always been her father's child more than her mother's. Her sense of duty to her parent was strong, but she had waited so long for this moment. Besides, she'd spent the past several weeks almost constantly in the company of her mother and sister. They knew she planned to resign from the company, and she had also tentatively mentioned the possibility that she might be traveling for a while.

Alice shook her head. Even so, it would not be right to vanish without so much as a by-your-leave. So. She would set up her equation on the chessboard, just to see if her hunch was the correct one, then leave off her departure until the morrow, after she had seen her family. After all, she'd waited this long; what could one more day hurt?

So resolved, Alice pulled out her memorandum-book and opened it to the page with her calculations. She fetched a stub of pencil, a protractor, and her navigator's compass—a gift from the captain of _Wonder—_from her desk and dropped to the ground beside the chessboard. Careful not to scratch its immaculate surface, she laid a piece of blotter paper over the board and used the protractor to find the exact center of the squares. Upon this center, she rested the sharp, shining point of the compass.

She was concentrating so hard on beginning the circle that she paid little heed to the chiming of a clock that began somewhere off in the distance, not too near and not too far. Each note was a pitch-perfect cascade of sound that made Alice smile without realizing she was doing so.

The gas light flickered in the frosted-glass globes. Out of the corner of her eye, Alice saw her shadow leap suddenly against the back wall as the light nearly went out, then came back up again in a hollow rush. The clock continued to chime, its tones far off but somehow intimate. The pencil's point, secure in the other end of the compass, touched the blotting paper at the point where the chess squares met the ebony border. As she began to trace the circle, Alice whispered, "When is the width of a circle like a dessert?" Slowly, carefully, she completed the circle. The pencil's graphite line met itself, and she stopped.

The rain lashed against the high, latticed windows of her bedroom. The storm was growing worse; muted thunder cracked in the distance, but all Alice's attention was on the circle. She could see the outlines of the horn and ivory squares below the paper. Carefully, she laid aside the compass and took up the protractor. From the pinhole dot of the circle's center, she measured a precise line to the edge, and drew a single radius.

A smile curved her mouth. "When it's Pi," she said softly, the answer to the riddle. She measured the radius line with the protractor and scribbled that sum into this equation:

_**2**__**π**__**r=C**_

Instead of _**r**_, she wrote in the measurement she'd just taken, did the math in her head, rechecked it on paper, and scrawled that number on the blotting paper inside the circle. Then she sat staring down at it, the solution, the circumference that solved the equation and should take her one more step toward Underland.

For a moment, nothing happened. The clock was silent. Even the rain seemed to have ceased briefly outside, as if it was waiting for something. Then, to Alice's alarm, the blotting paper caught fire so abruptly that it became a blackened cinder drifting upward on the heat of its own combustion before she could so much as put out a hand to stop it. When she did so, belatedly, it crumbled to ash in her fingers, stinging her skin with tiny red-orange sparks.

"What on earth—" Alice began, but she never finished the sentence because just then she glanced back down at the chessboard. Her featherlight pencil-drawing was burned into it; a deep, black, perfect circle that scorched ivory and horn alike. As she watched, the two colors on the board, white and red, began to melt off their squares and run toward each other, like oil and water separating: red to the right, white to the left. In seconds, instead of a chessboard covered with red and white squares and incised by an ugly black circle, there was a chessboard that was half red, half white, and incised by an ugly black circle.

It occurred to Alice then that she might want to back away, but her body was late in responding to this notion, and then it was too late altogether. With a resounding crack, the chessboard split asunder. The ebony border dropped away and seemed to liquefy, a dark pool that spread from beneath the shattered board toward where Alice sat immobile, as entranced and horrified as a rabbit is by a dancing stoat. Thunder smashed the sky again outside, followed by lightning, and in the flash of brilliant blue light from the window, Alice could see the red side and the white side of the chessboard growing upwards, elongating, curving into sharp twin points of red and white, like two teeth breaking up through nightmare gums.

The dark pool of what had once been ebony touched her foot. Suddenly, Alice became dizzy, and put out a hand to stop herself from falling. The hand went out and out and down and down, and she saw to her horror that the curved points of horn and ivory in what had once been a chessboard were growing, looming overhead, blocking out the familiar view of her chamber. Her hand found the floor at last, but she could scarcely feel anything over the sudden howling of a terrible, cold wind. Had the storm blown her windows open? She looked round, and was astonished to see that her windows were massive now, unreachably high above her on the far wall.

Alice looked back at the crazily altered chessboard. The terrible wind made it hard to think. She tried to stand, to get away from those ominous-looking spikes, but she felt she was being smothered by mounds of soft, slightly damp fabric. She flailed, beginning to panic, and opened her mouth to scream when all at once she realized what was happening.

The windows hadn't grown; the chessboard hadn't grown. She had shrunk. Just as if she'd taken a dose of pishsalver, she'd been reduced to a mere eighteen inches high. _But that's impossible_, she thought wildly. _I haven't drunk anything_.

"The magic works differently, when you take this path." The voice was silky, smug, and a little bit sad. It came from somewhere behind her. Wildly, Alice turned to see who it was, kicking out of the remains of her soggy clothes as she did so. There was nobody there.

The wind seemed to be simultaneously pushing at her back and pulling at her front, drawing her inexorably toward the red and white spires. Alice had her cream-colored camisole tangled hopelessly round her from shoulder to ankle, and kept tripping on the voluminous skirt of the hem, which hampered her resistance to the strange vortex.

"Who _are_ you?" Alice called desperately. "Have I done it right? Have I opened the..." her voice trailed away, and she turned again to stare at the red spire and the white one. Oddly, she could smell the ocean on the wind. "Gates of horn and ivory," Alice finished in a whisper, staring at the cruelly-tipped spines above her. They curved toward each other to form an arch, and now that she could see them from below, they very much looked like a gate.

"That's right," said the voice in her ear, full of melancholy wisdom. "You've opened them. Opened your gambit too early, straight into enemy hands. Alice, why didn't you wait to say goodbye to your mother?"

Alice whipped her head to the side, and this time caught a fleeting glimpse of something: a too-wide feral grin, and two bright teal eyes.

"Chessur?" she asked incredulously.

There was no answer. The wind dragged and shoved Alice, step by reluctant step, toward the gap between the gates. Frightened, she curled her bare feet into the polished wooden floor in an effort to stop, but she only succeeded in losing her balance and being thrown by all fours, whereupon the wind shrieked with a manic-sounding delight and blew harder. Her thoughts were a confused jumble lost somewhere between triumph and panic: had she really succeeded in returning to Underland at last, only to be thrown into the maw of some unimaginable horror?

Somehow, she regained her feet, determined to go through the gates with some shred of dignity intact. The wind whipped her hair and her makeshift clothing into wild tangles, flayed her onward. Just as she was close enough to reach out and touch the smooth ivory pillar to her left, a frisson ran down her spine. Alice twisted with great effort to look behind her. A doorway appeared, outlined in greeny-gold light, midair in the room behind her. A man stepped through, a familiar scarecrow figure that brought a wordless cry of denial to Alice's throat. He looked up and saw her, and Tarrant Hightopp, the mad Hatter, came on at a run.

Alice's eyes fixed on his face. This was all wrong, she thought. The scarred child in Shanghai had told her to go through the gates of horn and ivory, and _he _would be waiting on the other side. What, then, was he doing here, in her bedchamber? And who was waiting on the other side?

There was no time to think it through. What mattered was that he was here, now, and in the dim confusion of her mind, Alice was aware that along the way she'd made a terrible mistake. "Hatter," she gasped, and strove with every muscle and fiber to escape the weird vortex that had hold of her. Her body arched against the gale. She scrabbled with hands and feet at the slick floor, desperate to get back to him. The Hatter leaped forward, reaching for her. Their fingertips brushed together, sending a jolt through Alice at the brief contact. Somewhere in the screaming distance came the sonorous tolling of a bell, pitched just like the sweet clock had been, but now striking some terrible hour. Then an enormous, unseen force yanked her up and back, out of his reach.

The Hatter's expression became one of horror and grief, and his eyes, those eyes she'd dreamed of every night for six years, turned abruptly from a green brilliant with joy and hope and fear and longing, to the black-rimmed gold of killing rage.

Alice shrieked once as she was flung through the gates, feeling as if her hide was being scoured from her bones. The world went dark, and the light in the Hatter's eyes went with it.


	5. Madness and Hope

"_A man talking sense to himself is no madder than a man talking nonsense not to himself."_

_ - Tom Stoppard_

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The Gates exploded. One moment they were there; the Hatter could already feel their pull as their magic began to shrink him enough to squeeze between the pillars of dream, false and true. He'd exulted in that feeling, determined in every atom to reach Alice in the precious remaining seconds, grab hold of her, and, if he couldn't pull her back, to go through the Gates with her so she did not have to stand alone on the far side.

The next moment, the awful tones of the Synclock tolled their last. He touched Alice's fingers but could not grasp, and then it was too late. The Synclock had stopped, and he was out of time. Alice was yanked backwards through the Gates, and their manifestation in this non-magical world disintegrated in wicked shards of flying ivory and red horn. The Hatter, unable to stop his trajectory, plummeted straight into this destruction, hit the wooden floor of Alice's bedchamber, and rolled to his feet again. He did not feel the agony of dozens of cuts inflicted by the shrapnel from the Gates, nor the hot wetness of blood that welled from his pale skin.

He had been determined in every atom, and it had not been enough.

"_NO!_" he bellowed, and whipped around in an agony of denial and terror, still searching for Alice, still unable to quite believe she was gone, vanished, wrenched from his grasp and delivered into that of Stayne and Bluddy Behg Hid. No. _No. _He stumbled through the room, snatching things up, throwing them down, breaking them, tearing them, looking for some vestige of her while his mind raged at him: Helpless, hopeless, hapless, hatter, matter, madder, mad.

"Hatter!" An urgent voice at his elbow, and another at his ankle, made him look round. Four insistent furry paws plucked at him, beseeched him back toward the now-faintly glowing doorway that had been his thrice-cursed passage (late, late, _too late_) to this place. "Hatter, please! Let's go! You _know_ there's hardly any time after the Synclock stops before Wendel closes his door."

The Hatter hissed, spittle flying from his lips and eyes blazing. He raised his foot and shook the Dormouse off. The look on his face made Mallymkun quail for the first time in her life; she was afraid, for a moment, that he was going to stomp her flat like some common vermin. "Leave me be, ye wee miserable beastie," the Hatter snarled. "Ah'm nae leavin' withoot hem."

"But you must," Mally squeaked, desperate that they not get stuck here in Overland. It would take ages to get to a rabbit hole, and to judge from the dreadful tales McTwisp had spun, this place was a danger to all of them, the Hatter most especially.

"Let me try." The Cheshire Cat's silky tones came out of the air beside the Hatter's elbow. He materialized fully and felt the strain at once; maintaining his corporeal form in a thoroughly non-magical world was a tremendous effort. If he himself did not return to Underland soon, Chessur's essence would dissolve into nothing. "Tarrant, don't be a fool," he snapped, propelling himself on level with the Hatter's head and effectively stopping him in his tracks. "The Synclock has stopped. The Gates are destroyed. We must find another way to Alice, as quickly as we can. Surely you're not so insane that you believe we can do it from _here_." The Cat emphasized the last word in a sneering drawl.

As he'd spoken, Chessur had wrapped his tail around the back of the Hatter's neck, ever so gently, and had propelled him toward the magical door to Underland until they were now mere steps from it. Mally cast a worried glance through it; there were stars on the other side, and the magical glow had nearly faded. "It's closing!" she hissed, and grabbed the Hatter's pant-cuff, and tugged.

"But Ah've loast hem," the Hatter moaned, heedless of the danger as his mood careened from fury to despair in an instant. He buried his bleeding face in his bleeding hands. The door had all but disappeared.

"Only if you believe you have," snapped the Cat, recalling suddenly what he'd overheard on Frabjous Day, that oh-so-intimate conversation between the Hatter and the Champion, before they had all taken the board to overthrow the Red Queen.

Tarrant Hightopp's head snapped up. His eyes blazed amber for another instant, then cleared to their more usual intense green. "Of course, you're right, Chessur." He glanced around, bewildered at the shambled state of Alice's bedchamber. "What happened here? Oh, never mind that, look! The Door is closing, and here we are chatting away, naughty creatures. Come! What are we waiting for? We have to find a way to get Alice back!"

Mallymkun let loose a snort of disgust and relief at this outburst; it turned to a squeak of surprise the next second as the Hatter plucked her up in one hand, caught unceremonious hold of Chessur's ruff with the other, knocked their heads together when he used both hands to make sure his hat was still in place, and dashed back through Wendel's Door just as it winked out of sight.

A breathless Mirana met them on the other side, still beseeching an angry little man who looked to be made all of grass clippings, save for the two long, curly antennae sprouting from his forehead. "Ye may command me thus, lady," the green man was saying stoutly. His arms were crossed and his feet planted pugnaciously as he glared unafraid up at the Queen, though she was more than twice his height. "But I'll not heed ye. Anythin' could come through yonder door if I have it open longer than the rule. There be laws even ye cannot break."

Even in her distress, the White Queen's voice had a gentle, musical sound. "But, good Wendel," she began; then broke off, eyes widening, as the Hatter tumbled back into existence, bearing the Cat and the Dormouse with him, just as the Door winked out of existence with a pop and a faint whiff of lilac and treacle pudding.

"See?" the taciturn Wendel said, flapping his hand lazily at the trio as if the miss hadn't been horribly near. "Not a thing to worry about, White Lady. Now, adieu." He vanished with a pop much like his door had made, leaving behind a small pile of fragrant grass where he'd stood.

"Always a whimsical fellow, Wendel," the White Queen mused. "Still, there's no one better for making the trees grow … oh!" She blinked at them, her lovely forehead marred by a single vertical crease of worry. "But where is Alice?"

Mally shot the Hatter a desperate look. "We were too late, your Majesty," she said simply, and curled into a ball in the Hatter's palm to hide her tears.

"I lost him, that lovely little boy," the Hatter intoned in a dead voice, bereft of lisp or lilt. "We touched, just for one bright second, but the Synclock had tolled its last and the Gates had Alice."

Mirana seemed to wilt. "But that means ..." She couldn't finish. Her expressive eyes filled with the fear of all that it meant. One white hand flew to her throat, as if by stopping the words she could stop Alice's fate as well.

"It means," broke in the Cheshire Cat with a silky purr, oblivious as usual to the anguish of his fellow beings, "That Alice is now the captive of your sister and the Knave, in the Outlands." He had vanished out of Tarrant's undignified grasp and was now drifting above the Queen's head, his tail waving lazily with outward unconcern.

Mirana shook her head. "I simply can't believe it," she whispered. "How could they have such power over her? I banished them with nothing."

"Not nothing," the Cat yawned. "Obviously. Did anyone think to turn out their pockets? They were able to manipulate a human agent long enough to get it into Alice's head that she must pass through the Gates of Horn and Ivory." Idly, he extended one paw and unsheathed silvery claws, turning them this way and that to admire how they caught the light. "It seems likely that they smuggled a Derisionator with them, and who knows what besides."

"If only Alice had thought to take a sword!" wept Mally, still curled in the Hatter's hand. That hand, Mirana noticed, was beginning to vibrate slightly.

"Chessur, Mally. Enough, now." She spoke mildly, but there was sufficient hint of warning in her voice to make Mally uncurl and glance up at the Hatter's face. With a tiny squeak, the Dormouse leaped from his palm to the ground and darted between the Queen's feet.

Chessur paid no attention, so when a pale hand, bleeding from numerous small gashes, seized him by the throat, he was at first too astonished to evaporate. "Whaaaaaaaugh!" he squawked, and found himself suddenly nose to nose with the grim countenance of the Hatter, his eyes once again lit to dangerous amber and rimmed heavily in black. The Cat's own teal eyes went wide in shock.

"Doan ye _ivair_," the Hatter spat between clenched teeth, "Try the _guddler's scut_ tripe ay how ye seen it all camin' aren't ye varry mooch tha _lad_, when it cams tae Alice, boyo. Not if thou dost wish tae continue tae be oan live."

"Tarrant," said Mirana gently.

"_It is not a joke!_" roared the furious Hatter, and squeezed. Chessur, whose pupils had dilated enormously during his friend's diatribe, vanished at once and reappeared on humble earth, just behind Mirana's skirts. He began vigorously to lick his paw and rub it over one ear, pretending that he wasn't visibly shaken, and avoided looking at anyone.

"I know," the Queen soothed. "I know it's not a joke, Tarrant. But now is not the time to lose our heads. Our gamble has failed. Very well, then. We must get to Alice as quickly as possible. At least we know she is back in Underland. So, what's the quickest way to Outlands that we have?" Nobody said anything, each too busy nursing his or her grievance to answer. Mirana repressed a sigh. Sometimes, even her legendary patience was tried, and this was a matter of utmost urgency. "Come. Walk with me back to camp. Perhaps the others will have some ideas." She smiled wanly at all of them.

Without saying anything else, she knelt and picked up a small desk clock with a mahogany finish. The works still gleamed through the chiseled glass plate, but its face was cracked and the hands frozen, the pendulum still. Repressing a sigh, Mirana tucked the broken Synclock into her robes. The magic had almost worked; it had so nearly brought them—or more accurately, Tarrant—to Alice. She wondered briefly if its failure had been some cruel jest of Time's, in reparation for the Hatter's meddling years before. Oh, she'd have words with him if she found that to be the case. However, there were more important things she had to see to now. She rose again and set off swiftly across the grass.

They followed her, heads bent under the weary burden of their failure. All except the Hatter, who stomped along in his outsized boots, head listing to one side and then the other, muttering darkly in Outlandish and opening and closing his hands spasmodically.

Wendel's Hill and Door could be found, when the little man wished them to be found, in a broad valley nestled between the feet of two mountains in western Witzend. The peaks towered to the west, and from each rocky spur a little brook babbled and ran its way through the meadow, eventually joining together to form an energetic little river at the eastern border of the valley. The meadow grass was knee-deep, and the flowers grew tall and thin in order to see above the tips of the grasses. They were wild flowers here, but even so they bent their heads away from the sun to watch the White Queen as she drifted past, nodding at her off-kilter serenity as if they understood it perfectly.

However, they shrank from the Hatter, and hid themselves below the level of the grass when he pushed past.

He was in no mood to appreciate flowers, or alpine meadows, or strolls with the Queen on a dewy morning. He found all those things frivolous, useless, unnecessary. He was in no mood to discuss tactics, although he understood the need, the desperate and dire _need_, for those. He hadn't been a key figure in the Underland Resistance for twenty years (if one counted the thirteen during which he'd been obliged to kill Time to wait for Alice's return, and he certainly did) without understanding the importance of tactics. He was quite the master of them, often playing up his own insanity to disguise his actions.

And that was what it really came down to: actions and Alice. "I'm considering things that start with the letter _A_," he growled out loud to nobody as he scuffed churlishly through the grass in the wake of the party. "Adamant. Angry. Adoration. Abominable. Absolute action. At once. Well," he amended, his eyes shading briefly back toward their normal too-intense green, "Perhaps it's phrases that begin with the letter _A_. Even so, we must _ACT!_" He shrieked the last word just as they entered the small grove of trees where the party from Marmoreal had made its camp.

Two white bishops snapped to attention, holding their pikes perfectly vertical to allow the Queen's band to pass. Inside the clearing stood a number of silk pavilions clustered around a ring of soot-blackened stones. A large kettle depended from an iron tripod above the coals, which were cold and lifeless. Sitting together near the fire pit, huddled for consolation rather than warmth, were Bayard the bloodhound, his eldest son, and Thackeray the March Hare.

This trio glanced around as the Queen's party entered, then leaped to their individual feet, rushing over and clamoring all their questions at once so that nobody could understand a word.

The Hatter stood apart from the group, his back to them all, staring back through the trees toward Wendel's Door and his lost opportunity. Mally looked up at him a moment, then hopped quietly over and began to climb his trouser-leg. Absently, he plucked her up and set her on his shoulder.

Chessur ignored the fuss entirely. He curled up at once and appeared to be asleep. However, it escaped nobody's notice that he strategically placed the Queen between himself and Tarrant.

Mirana was finally able to make herself heard. "Has any word come from McTwisp?" Her fingers danced in the air as she spoke, showing her anxiety when her voice did not.

The March Hare shook his head vigorously. "Bloody rabbit, always late, always rooshin. He's late, he's late—hey!" The deranged hare gave a startled oath and jumped back, eyes threatening to pop from his head. "The groond—et moved!"

As they were all used to such random outbursts from Thackeray, nobody paid him the slightest attention. The Hatter came back to join them; Mirana's gaze met his, unflinching but wary. He glared at her, fidgeting from foot to foot, refusing to be still or sit down. Mirana kept her eyes on him in a silent battle of wills as she said, "Nevertheless, McTwisp should be along in a moment, if all went well."

"But all didn't go well," Tarrant growled.

The Queen put a pensive finger to her lips. "Not for us, unfortunately. That's why I sent McTwisp on his … errand before we began this journey." She gave the Hatter a brief, wistful smile. "A wise ruler always plans for the worst."

The Hatter bared his teeth in a horrible imitation of a grin. Laughter forced its way out of his throat, hoarse and bitter. "Unfortunate? The worst? Let me tell you the _worst_." His face contorted as a myriad of emotions all fought for dominance there. Everyone except the Queen backed up a step; everyone except her refused to meet his eyes. Oblivious, the Hatter continued, "Stayne and Iracebeth have Alice at the other Gate, at the west end of the Outlands. The fastest we can get there, by boat, is eight days. The mountains are impassable. _Eight days_ their captive, and them seeing Alice as the author of their misery." The horror and helplessness in his eyes as he stared at the Queen were enough to make her lower her gaze. "They will hurt him, Mirana," he continued relentlessly. "Or kill him. Or worse." Suddenly he clutched at his head with both hands, shaking it frantically to and fro. It was all Mallymkun could do to hang on.

"I hate this!" the Hatter cried. "This—sanity, this awful knowing and doing nothing, this being _klotchen naught for usal_ all the time now and failing while my Alice is suffering and _Ah_ _could nae even gae wi' hem_."

There. It was out. His chest heaving, face frantic, Tarrant stood with his hands miserably wringing his hat, his red hair awry in corkscrew madness. Mally gasped at the words _my Alice_, Chessur lashed his tail and flattened his furry ears, Thackeray hid inside the cooking pot, and the guards glanced askance at each other and went discreetly back to their posts. Mirana, however, looked hard at the Hatter's face and saw love hiding in the madness and anger and confusion, and understood at last. She rose in a swoop of white and came to him, laying one cool hand against his burning cheek. The Hatter wanted to close his eyes and lean into his Queen's benison, but he couldn't, he could never rest, not while there was so much yet to do that he should have done long ago. He had let Alice go to make her own choice, and when she had tried to come back to him, he had failed her.

His eyes cooled from gold to green, and still they burned in his head. A tear slipped out of one of them and left a burning trail down his cheek as the salt of it smarted in the many small cuts on his face. When his tear touched Mirana's skin, it edged her fingers with crimson. The Queen resisted the urge to take a sample—tears and blood, shed in love, were rare indeed.

"We will get her back, Tarrant," she whispered with grim certainty. He stared back at her, not knowing what to believe.

Their tableau was interrupted by a nervous little _ahem_ from down near their feet. Mirana was the first to break eye contact, and glancing down, she saw that the White Rabbit had arrived, out of breath and fidgeting mightily. Hardly daring to hope, she knelt slowly beside him. "Hello, McTwisp. Welcome back. What news do you bring?"

The rabbit cast an anxious glance at the Hatter, nibbled in an anxious sort of way, and stammered, "I—well, that is to say, we, ah, I brought someone alone, do you see, and he says—"

"The point," said Mirana, ever so gently.

The Rabbit gasped a couple of times to collect himself. "There is a way to the Outlands that we don't know," he managed, and pointed to a spot of earth in the clearing just behind him, where the March Hare had lately been standing. "You'll have to ask him about it, though. He said he would tell no one but the White Queen."

They all turned to stare at the flattened spot of grass the White Rabbit had indicated. Four identical expressions of confusion and exasperation appeared on four faces. Four mouths opened to speak at once.

The grass shivered, then moved, then rose upward, followed by a small shower of rich black earth. From beneath the ground emerged an odd sort of creature. It was roughly the size of a badger, and had a badger's striped head and squat, powerful body. Instead of fur, though, the animal was covered in scales below the shoulders. It had a long, corkscrewed nose and tail, and although its front paws were as bowlegged and squat as any self-respecting badger ought to have, its hind legs had long, thin, lizard-like toes.

Tarrant Hightopp thought it a curious sort of creature; so curious that, had he been in a better temper, he should quite have liked to invite it round to tea. Anything so interesting-looking as that, in a land where practically everything looked interesting, ought to have very good stories to tell. However, he was not in a good temper, not at all, so instead of introducing himself as he otherwise would have, he settled for curling his lip balefully at the new arrival and pulling his hat low on his brow.

"It's a tove," breathed Mally, who unlike the Hatter was quite enchanted. She stared at this rarest of Underland's creatures, looking awestruck.

"Yes, and it's very slithy indeed," said the White Rabbit in an aggrieved tone. "A most distasteful characteristic in a traveling companion. Reminds me of a snake." He shuddered.

A hollow shriek came from inside the cooking pot. "I told you the groond was movin!"

Chessur circled the newcomer once, eyes bright with curiosity. "Well, well, well," he purred, as the tove, now fully emerged from its tunnel, blinked up at all of them in the sunlight. "What do you have to tell the White Queen, little fellow?"

The tove shook itself in a businesslike manner and padded across to Mirana, ignoring all the others. It paused to sniff at the hem of her dress with its long, curly snout, then looked up with adoration on its furry face, apparently convinced she was who she claimed to be.

"We remembers the Pact, your Majesty," it said. Its voice was as sly as Chessur's, but had a whiny, nasal quality that grated where the Cat's voice smoothed. "When anyone from the Resistance needs help, we gives it. There's not many of us, not in Outlands, not no more. Scattered on the islands we was after the Jabberwock came, and there we lives to this day, and doesn't see much, there not being much to see, you see." The creature paused, cocked its head as if waiting for a response, then scrubbed one paw quickly across its face in a disappointed sort of way when nothing came save for a menacing growl from the Hatter. It swung its flat head to stare at him; he seemed to intimidate it, for it cowered a little and said nothing more.

Mirana put out her hands. The tove looked shyly up at her, then came forward (keeping a wary eye on the Hatter) and extended one tentative paw to place in her palm. She smiled encouragingly, and finally the tove stepped up with its other foot until it was nose to nose with the White Queen. It retracted its long, curly snout politely so as not to collide with her much shorter one. "There, now," Mirana soothed. "You're doing well, and your people must be very brave to have survived so resourcefully. Now, why don't you tell me why you've come all this long way?"

The tove seemed to swell at her praise. It nodded eagerly, glanced at the twitching White Rabbit, and continued. "Well, as I was saying, there isn't much to see. But these past whiles, we been seeing something, yeah? We sees two nasty mean folk, an' they hunts us and burns all our lovely woods to keeps themselves warm and to cooks us up."

Mally made a shocked noise at the idea of anyone hunting a tove for food; Mirana waved a warning finger in the Dormouse's direction. The tove looked imploringly into the Queen's face. "Yon rabbit, he says you can gets rid of them, if I shows you where they are. And I can, your Majesty. I can takes you right to them."

"Oh, that's wonderful," breathed Mirana, and gave the tove's dirty paws a gentle squeeze of gratitude. "You are a clever fellow! Now then, I don't wish to rush you—"

"But we're in a terrible rush," interrupted the Hatter, from between his teeth. The things careening through his mind—Alice beaten and bloody, alabaster skin marred, wheat-sheaf hair tangled, while the Bluddy Beg Hid and the Knave laughed above her--would not go away, and became more vivid the harder he tried not to think about them.

The tove nodded, eager to be of use now that it had the White Queen's approval. "Oh, I understands. I can get you there in no times, no times at all. We can leaves now."

"Splendid," murmured the Queen, and gave the Hatter a significant look, which he missed as he was busy arranging his hat, pulling down his tattered lace cuffs, and shaking out his legs in preparation for immediate departure.

Chessur stretched leisurely and asked the tove, "How long, do you think? As that madman said, we're in a bit of a hurry."

The tove beamed at him a little nervously—he was, after all, a cat—and scrunched up its curly nose. "No times at all," it repeated confidently. "And all times." It wriggled a little beneath the frowns of incomprehension it now received, though whether it meant to be uncomfortable or superior was unclear. It dug its snout deep into the soil for a moment, winding its corkscrew nose round and round, then withdrew it in a fine, high spray of moist soil. Chessur pulled his lips back in disgust and vanished, to reappear above the Queen's head.

"I'm afraid none of us understands you," he told the tove in a carefully expressionless voice.

The tove sneezed. "We travels tovelike, see. We goes through a wabe." It beamed triumphantly and sat back on its scaly hindquarters, clearly waiting to be congratulated on its ingenuity.

Everyone frowned in confusion. Chessur said slowly, "A wabe? From the Jabberwock foretelling? I never did know what that was. Mad language, Outlandish."

Bayard growled thoughtfully. "It's Old High Outlandish, to be exact. Now let me see … I can nearly remember—"

"The grass plot around a sundial!" the Hatter cried suddenly. "Yes yes, of course. It's called a 'wabe' because it goes a long way before it, and a long way behind it, and a long way beyond it on each side."

"All the ways to the broken Gates," agreed the tove, looking up at the Hatter with cautious approval.

Bayard raised his ears at his friend and woofed; for a moment, the Hatter forgot his anxiety and capered around with the bloodhound, kicking out his legs joyfully and whirling Bayard by the front paws in a mad clumsy waltz. "Of course!" he cried, when at last he'd released the panting dog, and dropped in a deep bow to the startled tove. The rest of the group looked puzzled and faintly alarmed by the Hatter's abrupt change of aspect."No time, and all time! Our scaly friend means for us to travel from one sundial to another, anywhere in the world, by stepping into the shadows of one wabe and emerging at another. Brilliant! A way to outfox Time without killing him; I couldn't have done it better myself."

"Stepping nothing!" squeaked the suddenly outraged tove. "If you steps in wabe-shadow, you gets nowhere. It's gyre and gimble, or go home!"

The Hatter's mouth twitched in a way Chessur knew far too well. He slit his eyes at the tove, ready to come to its defense just in case.

"An' how," the Hatter asked, his Outlandish accent thickening from nothing, "Does one gyre and gimble, eh?"

"Like this!" announced the tove, undaunted by the Hatter's mercurial mood changes. It began a strange sort of dance there in the clearing: spinning around in widening circles and scuffing its feet and snout into the ground to make divots in the turf. The March Hare gave a whoop and leaped out of the cooking pot to join in. Mally began to grin, then to giggle, and before long she was gyring and gimbling as well, kicking up tiny bits of sod. Resigned to this display, the Hatter tried a few steps of his own and found it easy to master—not surprising, thought Mirana, watching him with all the patience she could muster; after all, the man did the best Futterwacken in Witzend _or_ Marmoreal.

Unable to bear it any longer, she cleared her throat in a musical sort of way, her black lips parted in a gleaming smile. "I believe that will do," she told them all. "But the nearest sundial, and therefore wabe, is in the courtyard at Salazen Grom, half a day's ride north."

The Hatter stopped and stared at his Queen in shock and remorse. "H-how could I forget?" he stammered. "Just dancing around like a mad thing … mad …" He ground his teeth in an agony of self-loathing.

Mally put a consoling paw on the toe of his shoe; the tove said gravely, "Naw, guv'nor, you was doin splendidly"; but Mirana just compressed her lips and said evenly, "Let us break camp, and make haste for Salazen Grom."

At that, they burst into a frenzy of activity. The men-at-arms made short work of packing up the tents and tacking up the horses. The Queen directed, floating here and there with her arms gracefully raised, keeping Thackeray out from underfoot and arranging a special basket at her pommel for the tove to ride in. In a very little time, the party was ready to move out.

Throughout the preparations, Tarrant Hightopp had stood in the center of the camp, honing his double-handed sword with a whetstone. Mally took up her favorite perch on his shoulder and watched this process with adoring eyes. The Hatter spun the sword in a humming arc, making the steel flicker around his head. "For Alice!" he roared, a maniacal smile on his face that had nothing to do with humor. Nevertheless, the shout was taken up like a battlecry, and the company moved north at a gallop with their voices echoing back at them from the mountain's flanks.

The horse's rhythms upset his thoughts. Everything about it seemed alien: the staccato beat of hooves, the rise and fall of the beast's shoulders and hindquarters, the stinging slap of its mane in his face. The Hatter had never been much of one for riding, even in the old days before the Red Queen's treachery. Now, he found that the regular motion of a galloping horse seemed to try to force his mind into the same pattern—linear and rhythmic rather than circular and tangential. He hated the intrusion, hated having to think in a plodding, forward-moving way.

It gave him too much time, too much clarity, to think about the things Stayne and Iracebeth might be doing to Alice. No doubt the Bluddy Behg Hid would simply want Alice's own lovely one off at once, and that would be that. But Stayne was another matter. Tarrant had seen how the Knave had looked at Alice that awful day in Salazen Grom, when he'd been producing hats for the Queen: a mixture of lust and loathing, betrayal, and fury. He had suffered first-hand the Knave's sadistic tendencies, and had only been able to keep his anger in check and his disguise in place by feigning more madness than he usually possessed.

Alice had no such recourse; nor did she have the balm of friends. Stayne was free to act out all his dark fantasies upon her body and her mind; might even be doing so right now, as Tarrant endured this interminable ride to the Red Queen's former court. And it was all his own fault. If he'd been just a few seconds quicker, Alice would be safe now in Underland, where she belonged. With him.

It was enough to drive him mad, if he hadn't been there already. He could even feel his sanity peaking, teetering on the edge of a long dark fall from which there might be no returning. With a wordless snarl, the Hatter gripped the reins tighter and drove his heels with uncharacteristic violence into his mount's ribs. The horse squealed in protest, but flattened its ears and pounded past the rest of the party, as if it could outrun the grim figure that clung to its back.

So it was that the mad Hatter came to Salazen Grom half a league ahead of Queen's party, riding hell for leather, in the deep golden afternoon of Maltrocious Day. He pounded through the open gates of the empty stronghold and cantered his mount down to the now-clear moat, where he dismounted and gave the heaving animal its head to drink. Leaving the horse there, he ran up into the great hall and out the other side, to the croquet-ground.

The castle had fallen to disrepair in the years since Iracebeth had lived here. Upon returning to the throne, Mirana had decided that too many bad memories inhabited the place, and had kept her seat at Marmoreal instead of moving back to the ancestral home of her line at Salazen Grom. The place had been scoured of any trace of her sister, but it still sat on the plain, red and white and forbidding, a grim reminder of all that had happened there. Inside, as the Hatter strode through the echoing halls, he noticed that the marble had come loose in some places, allowing columns to topple and arches to fall. Grass grew peacefully through the once-bare paving stones. The croquet-ground lawn was kept short by the herds of wild goats and pigs who lived there, but the hedges had grown tangled and wild, and no longer resembled topiary art.

Tarrant strode to the very center of the grounds, where a circular strip of marble was inlaid on the grass, perhaps twelve feet across. He shooed a pair of goats out of the short turf that grew inside the circle and stepped up to the centerpiece. It was a sundial, built of moonstone and gold and standing nearly as tall as he was. The gnomon was as sharp and thin-edged as a fine sword, and the shadow it cast on the dial face showed that it was near to brillig time. Rumor had it that Iracebeth had ordered it built in the first year of her reign, and that she had fed all the workers who'd created it to the Jabberwocky as soon as it had been set on its plinth. It was the beautiful work of doomed things; Tarrant didn't touch it.

Instead, he walked the diameter of the wabe, before and behind, beyond to each side, hoping desperately that it was big enough, that the tove's confidence was not misplaced. Minutes later, he heard the clatter of hooves on stone and looked up in his pacing to see that the full contingent had arrived. The Queen dismounted at the edge of the grass and came swiftly toward him. The tove followed her, creeling and skipping in delight as it perused the sundial with sharp little eyes and snuffled over every inch of the grassy wabe. The others crowded along behind, although the Queen's men formed a nervous little knot near the horses. They didn't like being here, not after what had happened to so many of them at the hands of the elder sister in this place.

The Hatter watched the tove out of eyes that glittered with impatience. "Well?" he asked, when it finally looked up from its assessment.

"S'not very big," the tove began doubtfully. "Can't have more than twelve toves gyre and gimble at once, heres." It looked up at them with its head cocked to one side, then added almost apologetically, "And no mores than four of your folk, begging pardons, but you are all so large, and needs lots of rooms to gyre and gimble properlike."

"I will go," Mirana told the tove, stepping up to take over before it turned to squabbling over who would be the four. Being a Queen sometimes had its advantages; the simplicity of one-woman rule was one of them. "And Tarrant, of course." She met the Hatter's eyes in time to see his fierce stubbornness melt away; he'd feared she would refuse him, so he expected to fight for the privilege. Mirana nodded to herself. "And Chessur and Mallymkun, because you're both small and clever enough to provide a distraction if we need one." She turned resolutely back to the tove. "Now then. What do we need to do?"

The tove wriggled all over with self importance. "Well, seeing as nones of you has traveled by wabe befores, it's best to holds tight to my tails—not too tight, mind, they're a long time growing back." Mirana nodded and reached for Tarrant's hand with one of hers, and took light hold of the tove's curly tail with the other. Tarrant in turn took Mally into his free hand, and Chessur snicked a single claw into Mally's sword-belt. The tove continued, "Then follow me into the wabe, an gyre and gimble as best you knows how. I'll guides us to the proper wabe in Outlands, a broken sundial on the coasts in a smashed auld hall across the channel from the bads ones' island. Then it's wade the channel and sets all to rights."

That speech delivered, the tove nodded perfunctorily, as if nothing more needed to be said. With no further ceremony, the little creature led the four of them onto the turf of the wabe, checked the position of the sun and the gnomon-shadow, and began its strange spinning, digging dance. The Hatter joined in at once, with Mally dancing upon his palm; Mirana and Chessur were more reserved, but eventually the Queen picked up her feet beneath her long train and did a fair job, and the Cat materialized completely and wriggled his way after them. Round and round the sundial they went, with the tove occasionally shouting encouragement or crying, "Faster, faster!"

It seemed to those watching that, as the sun sank toward the horizon beyond the walls, the shadows of the dancers reached toward the sundial's shadow, and met, and held. At the precise moment that the gnomon's leading edge put the shadow at brillig-time on the dial-face, all the shadows merged to one. Bayard was watching Tarrant at the time, and saw his friend's eyes and mouth go wide in surprise as, suddenly and quite violently, he and the Queen, the Dormouse, and the Cat were sucked into the dark rift created by all those joining shadows, still clasping tightly to each other and following the strange creature called a tove. The old cloister-bell in the palace chapel tolled once and shattered in a dissonant crash of brass.

Then they were gone, and the dark rift became a harmless shadow once more, lengthening toward evening. Quiet spread over Salazen Grom.

"Did it work?" quavered the March Hare, who had taken shelter atop one of the white rooks' crowned heads.

"They're—gone, anyway," said Bayard slowly. His son whimpered and shifted his feet in the lush grass. "I guess now we wait, and get ready for anything."

* * *

_Author's note: I have deliberately altered the spelling of the March Hare's name in this chapter. The film credits give his name as "Thackery". I've changed that to "Thackeray"; pronounced the same, but is a more deliberate homage to the brilliant 19th century writer William Makepeace Thackeray, whose novels satirizing the upper class while managing to create no likable characters at all have always amazed and puzzled me. How the man created enjoyable, and often very funny, novels with dislikable characters seems to me to be a stroke of genius and madness; I'm certain Linda Woolverton did not choose the name by accident, and the liberty I take is merely intended to enhance that certainty._


	6. The Jaws that Bite, the Claws that Catch

"_Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster; and remember that when you gaze into the Abyss, the Abyss gazes also into you."_

_ - Friedrich Nietszche_

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* * *

  
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Alice woke, and at once wished she hadn't. She was freezing, and lying somewhere extremely uncomfortable, on her side. As soon as she tried, cautiously, to move, every nerve and muscle set up such a clamor that she gasped and locked her teeth tight together against the pain. After a few terrible moments, it subsided, only to be replaced with shivering now that she was conscious. Each tremor wracked her with a fresh wave of agony that had Alice biting her lips to keep from screaming. She couldn't quite remember why not screaming was important, but as that seemed very much to be the case, she decided not to quarrel with the instinct.

After enduring in silence for a while, Alice worked out that, while it felt as if her skin had been mostly sanded off, she did not feel the desperate, sharp urge to keep still that broken bones would have signaled. Very carefully, she opened her eyes to assess the damage, and her whereabouts. Her mind was growing sharper moment by moment, and she remembered now that she'd solved the riddle, which in turn had caused the gates of horn and ivory to grow—albeit in miniature—out of the chessboard. She'd been shrunk and sucked through them, but not before a door to somewhere lovely, somewhere green and gold, had opened in the middle of her bedchamber. The Hatter had come through it. He'd come to her, while she was trying to get back to Underland (and of course to him), and they had missed each other by less than a hair's breadth.

"Oh," whispered Alice to herself, but would now allow her self-pity to go any further than that. Her sight focused gradually on her surroundings, but there wasn't much to see. She was lying among, and on top of, sharp black rocks rimed with mineral deposits and wet with seawater, to judge by the salt tang in the air, and the sound of waves crashing and surging close behind her. She drew a deep breath that hissed between her clenched teeth, and sat up quickly. She was afraid that if she took it slowly, she'd not get it done at all. Somewhat to her surprise, and much to her relief, sitting up didn't hurt as much as she'd feared it would. Alice relaxed her aching jaw and, with an effort of will, kept her teeth from chattering as she looked around.

Getting her head above the level of the rocks failed to improve the view or enlighten her about her location. Twisting her head, she saw a boiling, gray, forbidding sea just behind her. Every few seconds, the surf pounded into the rocks at the end of the small promontory where she huddled, sending up a vicious spray of water. It was difficult to say where the sea met the sky, because the sky was of similar color and temperament, all stormy clouds and grayness. Alice shivered. At the other end of the promontory, the rocks broadened and flattened out to a pale, cold beach. Framing this beach, one on each side of the jetty, were two pitted, timeworn columns that rose like broken teeth into the stormy sky. Alice stared up at the ancient monoliths, then hugged herself against the terrible recognition.

One of the columns was red, and the other was the yellow-white of old ivory.

"The gates," Alice said aloud, stunned. She shivered again, violently, as sea-spray sluiced over her bare skin, and hugged herself even tighter. Wait a minute, she thought. Bare skin? She glanced down at herself in sudden fright and was horrified to see that she was wearing nothing except her much-abused white silk camisole. Her arms, feet, and legs were reddened from the cold and scratched in places from who knows what. Alice remembered being tangled in her camisole as she was thrown through the gates from her world, only then she'd been shrunk to less than two feet and the undershift had been a dress on her. Now, back to her own size, the camisole was merely a camisole. She was nearly naked, and alone, in this cold and desolate place.

She fought back a wave of panic, and stubbornly refused to give in to the urge to cry. Neither response would solve anything, and Alice knew that while common sense might never be her strong suit, she had grown adept at handling unforeseen and often unpleasant situations. Granted, nothing quite this unpleasant had ever happened to her; but when one was a young woman in a strange place, often alone, one learned to develop certain protective qualities.

So. First thing: to find something to protect herself from the cold. There seemed to be nobody around, so at least she wouldn't die of shame to be caught half nude (and decidedly the _wrong_ half, if one had to choose). However, she might well die of exposure if she didn't get warmer soon. With a decisive nod, Alice carefully stood up. Self-consciously, she tugged her camisole as low as she could around her hips. This place, wherever it was, might be deserted, but the fact remained that she was nearly naked out-of-doors, something she hadn't been since she was a toddler. Habit dies hard, she thought defensively at the part of her mind that wanted to laugh at her propriety.

Wincing as the sharp black rock cut her feet, Alice picked her way back along the jetty to the beach. It was hardly a beach at all, really; just a strip of damp, pebbly sand about a yard wide by twenty or so long, curving like a little cove along a little way before the black rock again took over the shoreline. She stepped wide of the red column, looking up at it warily and loath to walk between the columns even though they appeared so ancient and barnacle-encrusted that she doubted they had any magic left. On firmer land, she could see, some distance inland, a few scrubby bushes and trees and patches of yellowed marsh-grass. There was nothing else. The lone and level land stretched away to the horizon.

Alice shook her head. First things first: get herself clothed. She began to search. On the scanty beach, she found a few bits of driftwood and broken shells, which she tossed aside. That was all. Alice was shivering in earnest now, and beginning to despair despite her positive state of mind. "No," she said stubbornly, and trudged up the beach to where it met the first of the scrubby sedge grasses. Hidden among them, she found a large bundle of seaweed, half dry and stinking to heaven.

Alice dropped to her knees, ignoring the protests of her cold and abused muscles. Slowly, stopping often to blow on her fingers to make them work properly, she sorted out the slippery brown strands and wove a braided belt hung with enough ropy strands to cover her modesty. She knotted the affair around her waist, shuddering at the cold, slimy feel of the seaweed against her flesh and wrinkling her nose at the rank odor. Still, she was covered, and when the stuff was fully dry it ought to resemble a very bulky grass skirt, much like the island women wore in Polynesia.

She hoped so, anyway. Even half wet, the makeshift skirt weighed a ton. Tentacular bits of the stuff dragged in places past her ankles, but Alice was too tired to go looking for something to hack them shorter with. She wasn't much warmer, but she did feel a little more secure now that her nether regions were covered. Her situation seemed desperate enough that she decided to take comfort in that, little as it was.

She took a couple of tentative steps, then hops, to test the strength of her new article of clothing. Satisfied that it was going to hold, Alice made her way back up the beach, intending to walk further inland as long as she had light.

"Think, Alice," she muttered to herself as she picked her way along the strand, placing her feet carefully to save the tender soles. "The riddles. What did they say, exactly? What went wrong?"

She remembered exactly what had been said. The young Chinese boy had told her, very clearly, that she had to pass through the gates of horn and ivory to get back to Underland. Well, there was no denying she'd done that, which meant that she was somewhere in Underland now. Nowhere she recognized, granted, but that was hardly surprising; she hadn't covered all that much ground during her previous visits. She could be anywhere. What bothered her was that she seemed to be entirely alone. The boy had also told her, "_He is waiting on the other side_." But no one was here, so something must have gone wrong.

Then, there was the second message, the one from Haigha—Alice wasn't sure who the first messenger had been, because he'd dashed off in such a hurry. But she was quite certain that the second had been the March Hare, glamored somehow to look like an old man in her world. And _he_ had told her that danger awaited her on the other side of the gates.

Alice's path through the grasses had brought her opposite the gates once more. She'd already passed the red horn one before she noticed, and she stopped now to eye the ivory one speculatively. "No one's waiting," she informed it in an accusing tone. "And there's no danger, either, unless it's of freezing to death or starving to death." She rustled her seaweed-fronds irritably and rubbed at her bare arms, wishing that underthings weren't made quite so thin. Even though she was far enough from the ocean to avoid its biting spray, the wind blew keenly here and hadn't let off since she'd arrived.

"And where, exactly, is here, anyway?" Alice asked both gates in exasperation. She flung her arms out to the winds and spun in a circle, nearly tripping on the dragging ends of her skirt. "There's nothing here!" she shouted. "There's nobody! I've come all this way, but something's gone wrong, and there's _nobody_ here to explain it to or ask for help!" She was in a fury by then, her fists balled at her sides and her whole body rigid. "I'm cold!" she yelled at the indifferent gates. "I'm bruised! I'm _not properly dressed!_" She shrieked this last, shaking, and felt as if she could easily go ranting about this grim countryside all day, venting her feelings.

"It won't solve anything, Alice," she told herself. She made her hands and shoulders relax, closed her eyes, and took a few deep, steadying breaths. "Just … hold it together. You'll be fine, but you have to hold it together." Gradually, she calmed down. She needed a clear head to think, to find her way out of wherever she was. All right, then. Old as they were, these gates must have been built by someone all the way out here, for a purpose. They were also the only distinguishing landmark. Right, thought Alice. She'd start with those.

She opened her eyes and quelled the shiver that rose in her at the thought of going near those ancient, forbidding-looking pillars. Instead, she set one foot in front of the other, thinking only of her next step. The wind blew ragtag all around, but it was a natural, ocean-whipped wind, not the gale force she'd experienced in her room that had dragged her through the miniature gates. She took another step, and another, and then she noticed what she at first took for a bundle of rags, lying in a hollow of sand and crushed sedges.

It lay on the landward side of the gates, perhaps thirty feet from them; roughly the same distance Alice herself had been on the jetty side when she'd awakened. Swallowing hard, she raked her hair behind her ears with both fingers to keep it out of her eyes, and peered closer.

It wasn't a bundle of rags. It was a person. Alice could see a slender, pale hand outstretched on the sand, the fingers limply clutching a handful of sedge grass. Alice felt her heart triple its rhythm. Had she been wrong? Had the Hatter made it, after all, to be flung on this side of the gates while she had ended up at the other?

Alice picked up handfuls of her skirt, and ran toward the still figure. Sand kicked up from her flying feet. A few yard away, she could see red hair tumbled upon the ground. She wanted to scream, to weep with relief; but he was so very still. Gasping, she slid to her knees beside him, ignoring the sand that burned her knees or the seaweed strands that tore loose from her skirt. "Hatter," she breathed. She put a gentle hand on the shoulder beneath the tattered black cloak. Bonelessly, the figure rolled face up, and for a moment Alice didn't breathe at all.

She was looking at Iracebeth of Crims.

_You are banished to the Outlands, until the end of Underland. You won't have a friend in the world._

Alice felt as if she were suffocating. Her mouth opened and she made a strangled, inarticulate cry, but she couldn't get a breath in. Her hands flew to her convulsing throat. "Nnnnn," she choked out, and then, with a great sobbing heave, she drew in a single breath, the realization of where she was blinding her to everything except the former queen's unconscious, grotesque face. "No," she whispered. "Oh, no."

"Oh, yes," observed a sardonic voice at her back.

Alice's breath hitched and she whirled around, crouching defensively beside the unconscious Iracebeth.

"What an idiot." The Knave of Hearts stood, hands on leather-clad hips, staring down at the Red Queen with a sneer on his scarred face. His gaze flicked to Alice, hard and dark as flint, and she flinched. For a moment, she thought she'd go mad with fright. First nobody, then the senseless queen, then Ilosovic Stayne looking very much sensate and altogether forbidding. It was quite more than enough sudden arrivals for Alice, who had nearly accepted the fact of her solitude. She was in Underland, all right. She could almost hear Absolem telling her not to get too used to anything being what she expected it to be.

The Knave did not appear to notice the consternation on Alice's face. He merely carried on, as if he was enjoying himself, his brooding gaze again on the Red Queen's still form. "I told her it was dangerous to stand within shouting distance of the Gates when they finally opened. But no, she had to be there first." Stayne looked again at Alice, who managed this time to meet his gaze with her chin up. A smile ghosted across his thin face. "She insisted," he told her in a different, oily tone, "On getting her hands on you before I could, you see." He stooped into a crouch, reminding Alice of a spider with his long limbs, and held a hand out to her. She stared at it, fighting the urge to skitter away from him. "Welcome back, Alice," the Knave said. "I've been waiting for you for a long time." His mouth smiled, but his single living eye was as dark and cold as the heart-shaped patch he wore over the dead one. He held out one pale hand to help her up.

Alice did back away from him, then, edging carefully around Iracebeth before she rose to her feet with that distance between them. She kept her chin up, but was painfully aware of her scratched and bruised skin, her thin white camisole, and her ridiculous seaweed skirt. She hoped fleetingly that her appearance might convince Stayne that she'd gone mad, and he'd decide to just leave her alone.

The Knave smirked, his eyes taking in every inch of her, pausing here and there: on her bare feet, on the stripes of fair skin that showed here and there through the seaweed, on the faint outlines of her nipples through damp silk, and finally on her face beneath its long blond curls. He licked his lips, and Alice saw a slow flush work its way up his neck to create two spots of color high on his livid cheekbones. "Yes," he said. "A very long time." The lasciviousness in his voice was as undisguised as it had been that night in the hall at Salazen Grom, when he'd cornered her eight-foot self.

Then, Alice had been nineteen and frightened. She'd escaped simply by being taller and stronger than Stayne was. Neither of those advantage was hers now. However, she thought, taking a steadying breath and watching Stayne warily, she had certain assets at twenty-five that her younger self had not possessed. In her time as a trader, Alice had encountered male opposition to her decidedly unfeminine choice of career more times than she cared to remember. This had ranged from subtle disdain to open assault, and Alice had managed each time to keep her dignity and her virtue intact by learning to read the circumstances and defuse them in many different ways. So she watched Stayne now, refusing to acknowledge the butterfly staccato of her heartbeat or the fear that shot through nerve and artery.

"Congratulations, Stayne," she said in a low voice. "You tricked me very neatly into coming here through the gates. How did you do it? Or was it her?" Her glance flicked down to where Iracebeth lay unmoving.

Stayne's gaze sharpened on Alice. It would, she thought, have hurt like knives if that looks were physical things. She swallowed. For a long moment he said nothing, just looked at her with the satisfaction borne of long waiting and planning paid off in full. Suddenly he laughed, a short, disagreeable sound. His eyes never left Alice's. "Her?" he sneered. "_Her? _She couldn't plot her way out of a straight course. Take away the thrall of the crown, the Bandersnatch, the Jabberwocky—" he waved an irritable hand, "And Iracebeth is nothing more than a spoiled, overgrown brat." He spat contemptuously into the Red Queen's tangled hair.

Alice took the opportunity of that brief moment while his attention was diverted to take another step back from him, but Stayne moved so quickly it was as if he'd guessed her intent. His gloved fingers closed around her left upper arm like a vise. Alice breathed in deeply through her nose and forced herself to look squarely up at him. He was gazing down at her again, just as intensely as before, but he looked disappointed now.

"You've lost your largeness, Um," he told her mockingly. "How ever will you get away this time?"

Alice affected surprise. "What makes you think I want to get away?" she asked, looking at him straight. "You took the time to bring me here. You must have a reason, and because it's about me, I want to hear it." She tilted her head to one side, studying him, praying her fear didn't show through her level brown eyes. "Besides, you still haven't answered my first question: how did you do it?"

The Knave looked taken aback for a moment, but quickly recovered himself. His fingers squeezed hard enough to wring a gasp of pain from Alice. That brought back the satisfied look. "It was easy," he said, sounding bored. "I used Underland magic to control a creature in your world. It didn't work perfectly, I confess; the child broke the spell sooner than I'd have liked, and some of my own—characteristics manifested briefly in him." He touched his face with his free hand. "Perhaps you noticed the scar?" Alice's eyes widened at the memory of the scar, the flaw in the child's beauty. The Knave chuckled coldly. "Clever Alice. But not so clever you couldn't tell a false dream from a true one. The Hare's message was right, but he was too late. For you, the chessboard was the only way back. He had to give it to you, even though the White Queen knew how much closer her sister and I were to the Gates."

Alice's mind felt as cold and sluggish as her limbs, and Stayne's painful grip made it difficult for her to concentrate. The problem with trying to outwit any inhabitant of Underland, as she should well have remembered, was that they didn't always respond in the way she expected them to. Almost never, in fact. Stayne had set her a trap, she had stepped neatly into it, and now he intended to carry out the rest of his plan, whatever it was. "That was—very clever," she faltered. "But what happens next?"

Stayne laughed. "Compliments and curiosity will get you everywhere. I've waited such a long time for this, you know." His voice roughened. He stopped stroking his face and moved that hand to caress her cheek. Alice closed her eyes, repressing a shudder at the feel of cold leather on her skin. "Look at me!" Stayne hissed, and she did, her breath coming short and quick. The Knave clamped her jaw between his fingers; she stiffened at the pain, and he laughed again, humorlessly. With a practiced move of his wrist, he yanked her closer until his long body was pressed against hers. Too swiftly for her to react, Stayne bent his head and kissed her.

There was no love, no tenderness in that kiss. Alice hadn't been kissed a lot, but she'd sufficient experience—even if most of it was vicarious—to know when a kiss meant something. The meaning in Stayne's kiss frightened her, and she reacted the only way she could think of. She let him kiss her, motionless, dispassionate, while his lips worked feverishly to draw a response out of her. Her eyes unfocused and her jaw went slack, and at last he raised his head, his expression bitter and incredulous, his single eye narrowed on her face.

Alice leveled her gaze at him. "I'm sorry," she said with vague politeness, as if she'd only just realized he was there. "Was that supposed to impress me?"

Stayne's lips drew back from his teeth in a feral snarl. He looked truly frightening, but Alice refused to quail before him. Instead, she took a small breath and kept a faint hint of disdainful mockery on her face, hoping that her ploy to emasculate him would work, if only to buy herself a little more time to work out how to get the upper hand in the situation. She dared not look down at Iracebeth, even to ascertain whether she was still breathing. The moment was too tense for that.

The furious knave watched her face, his own inches away. Slowly, deliberately, he drew the back of his gloved hand across his mouth, as if wiping away the taint of her lips. It was something Alice longed to do; the pressure of his mouth had been terrible, and she felt unclean. "I don't care," he told her flatly, "Whether it impressed you or not. You came to Underland to fulfill your dream, and you found me." He dipped his chin to her in a mocking salute, and his lank hair fell around his face. His eye glowed up at her through it. "Welcome, Alice," he jeered, straightening up to his full height. "To your nightmare, but to _my_ dream."

Alice stared at him. Her mind worked frantically to find a solution to the Knave's cryptic words. To fulfill her dream, the one she'd had over and over for six years, she'd have to be here with the Hatter, not with Stayne, who had mocked her for not knowing a false dream from a true one. If only she had more time, if she could think what to ask, she'd figure it all out. But she was out of time. Stayne's words told her so. He squeezed her abused upper arm tighter and drew her against his side with his other arm, and began to half-walk, half-drag her inland, away from the gates and Iracebeth's prone body.

Alice began to struggle despite herself, the fear of what he might do becoming suddenly very real, and her imagination for the moment careened out of control. "Stop that," Stayne said, and gave her a vicious, teeth-rattling shake. She stumbled, and some of the sticky strands of seaweed dropped away from her makeshift skirt. She mustn't lose control and panic, not now, but she had no weapons and no friends, and no one was around for miles to come to her aid if she ...

"I hope you scream," Stayne said huskily in her ear, and Alice started and recoiled, as much because he appeared to have read her thoughts as because she couldn't bear the lewdness in his face and voice. She skinned her bare foot painfully on an exposed rock and hissed, biting her lips against the pain while Stayne forced her to hobble onwards. "I _will_ hurt you, you know. I have all the time in Underland to do it, and you—you have years of misery to repay." They left the worst of the rocks behind and he pulled her now through ankle-deep sand and stunted grasses.

Alice kept quiet, avoiding his eye, trying to look around her as much as possible to see if she could get a better idea of their surroundings. Stayne noticed. "Go ahead and look. I've tried dozens of times to find a way out. But these little islands are a maze, and they always led me back here, and back to her." He laughed bitterly, crazily. The wind carried the dissonant sound away, but it continued to echo inside Alice's head. "A fate worse than death, Alice, to be trapped with that monster. But now. Ah, now."

He slowed to a stop on a little rise; Alice sensed him looking at her. She returned the look warily. Stayne was smiling, his sharp face a mask of greed and anticipation. "You're the monster," she shot back, unable in her rising despair to even think how to be diplomatic. She was furious with him, with the situation, but most of all with herself for not thinking things through. Once again, she'd jumped into Underland without forethought, and this time, the very worst had happened.

"That's right. I am." He smiled at her, showing every one of his teeth. "And we're almost to my lair." He turned and yanked her with him, going down the other side of the small hill in long strides. They were close to the first grove of stunted trees. Alice could see that a rude hut had been built beneath their scanty foliage, comprised mainly of driftwood and dead branches bound with sedge grass. As the hut came into sight, Stayne licked dry lips and hurried her toward it.

Alice dug in her heels. "No, wait!" she said urgently, knowing that she must not get cornered in that small place, because then all her options would be gone. She fought with all her strength, digging in her heels, twisting in his grasp, oblivious to the pain his steely grip inflicted. He continued to drag her, fending off her struggles very effectively by pinning her against his side, thereby denying her any leverage against his body. In desperation, Alice balled her right hand into a fist and swung it as hard as she could at the side of his head. It was a clumsy, glancing blow, but it landed square on the site of his ruined eye.

With a howl, Stayne let go of her. Alice fell hard to the ground, victim of her own tortuous struggles. She scrambled to her feet again, ignoring the fact that she pulled a good third of her skirt away in the process by standing hard on its ends. Stayne was bent double with both hands over his face; Alice could see the ominous seep of blood, glistening blackly on his gloves. Without waiting to see what he would do, she turned her back on him and ran.

Alice was weak, sore, cold, and barefoot; Stayne, by contrast, had lived on this land for more years than he cared to count. He was as inured as it was possible to get against the weather, and he was lean and fit and hungry for revenge. Alice's blow to his weakened eye socket enraged him beyond all sense. With a growl more animal than human, the Knave of Hearts was after her. She fled before him with the strength of desperation, but his was fueled by rage. This time, at least, his proved the stronger. He caught her before she'd gone a dozen steps, hauled her around by the midsection while she clawed and twisted like a wildcat. Gaining the entrance to the shack, he hurled her inside, where she struck the frame of the low cot against the far wall and crumpled to the ground.

Stayne advanced on her with a predatory step, his hands curved stiffly into claws, his single eye burning in his cheek. A corona of bright blood flared around the heart-shaped patch that covered his empty socket. He smiled widely as Alice looked up from beneath her mass of golden hair. A warm trickle ran down the deep scar in his cheek. His tongue darted out to catch it as it touched the corner of his thin mouth. Hot, sweet, metallic blood. She'd spilled his; it was high time and past time he returned the favor.

"An eye for an eye, beautiful," he said, and reached for her.


	7. Worlds Collide

"_And all should cry: 'Beware! Beware!_

_His flashing eyes, his floating hair!_

_Weave a circle round him thrice_

_And close your eyes with holy dread,_

_For he on honey-dew hath fed;_

_And drunk the milk of Paradise.'"_

_ - Samuel Taylor Coleridge_

_

* * *

_

With a soft mew of pain, Iracebeth of Crims, the former Red Queen, scrabbled at the loose sand of the hollow until she managed to pull herself into a sitting position. Her head felt even heavier than usual, beset with a dull throbbing that made her more irritable than ever. For a moment she sat in her small hollow, huddled against the wind, feeling sorrier than she ever had but still refusing to cry. She'd been Queen. Still was, by birthright. Queens didn't cry, not even when their husbands fell in love with other women. Not even when their last courtier brought their most hated enemy across a world just to spite them.

Queens didn't cry. They got revenge. She waited for some of her strength to return, and for the awful pounding in her head to subside, so that she could take the next step. In a little while, she tottered to her feet and looked out across the barren plain to where Stayne could just be seen, dragging that horrible Alice with him beyond the top of the little rise. The shack she still shared with her Knave was beyond that, and he seemed to be making a spelling-beeline for it.

Iracebeth remembered the terrible force of the Gates' vortex that had flung her against the rocks and must have knocked her insensible. How long she'd lain there, she didn't know; she just remembered awakening to voices above her. She couldn't open her eyes; her head hurt too much. So she'd lain there, feeling broken, and waited for them to notice her. How could they miss her? But no one had stopped to check that she was all right. No gentle hand had touched her cheek, no firm arms had helped her to sit up.

Instead, Stayne had called her an overgrown brat. He had spat into her hair. Those weren't necessarily things that Iracebeth found surprising; not anymore, not after so long in his company. He'd grown savage from the loss of his freedom and the destruction of all his plans; he had been from the moment her scheming little sister had banished them. Iracebeth hated him, but deep inside, in a place she didn't think about, she wanted nothing more than to win him back. She dreamed of it, at night, sleeping close to Stayne in their dreary little shack. When she was awake, she hardened her heart against his insults and gave them back as freely.

But then, while she had lain in the sand, discarded and ignored, she had heard the unmistakable sound of a kiss, and Stayne's fury as Alice hadn't responded properly. A kiss was unforgivable; was worse than unforgivable. She'd taken her own husband's head for having the audacity to smile at Mirana and offer his hand to help her down from her horse. A common courtesy, he'd called it. Those words had been the last of his that Iracebeth had had to suffer hearing.

A kiss. She stamped in fury and anguish, feeling the red flush come over her face that erased all other pain. Stayne had kissed Alice, and now it seemed likely that he was taking her to the shack where he slept on the cot while Iracebeth made do with the floor. Oh, she didn't think so.

"Pig," she hissed, and bent to scrabble at the loose edges of rock where they bordered the sand. "Swine. Traitor. You'll pay, and then you'll watch me kill that insolent girl. Then you'll pay some more." Her searching fingers found a splinter of black stone: rough, jagged, and wedge-shaped along one end. It would do well enough. Gripping her makeshift weapon, Iracebeth set off inland, toward the trees.

* * *

Alice shrank back from the expression on the Knave's face. She hated herself for doing it, for showing Stayne the slightest weakness. Where was the girl who had slain the Jabberwocky without any more knowledge of swordplay than a notion of which end to hold? Where was the woman who had stood toe to toe with Stayne, at a clear disadvantage, and mocked him anyway?

She was in a cage, that was where. Alice pulled her limbs defensively close to her body as the Knave of Hearts loomed above her. Clearly, he liked what he saw: Alice, trapped, helpless and shrinking before him. _I will hurt you_, he'd said. _I hope you scream_.

She'd be damned if she'd give him the satisfaction. The open entry to the hut was right behind Stayne. He squatted over her, and she could see the wedge of gray daylight beyond his shoulder. Her eyes flicked back to his face as he clasped her chin in his fingers and turned her head roughly from side to side. "Yessss." He exhaled low and rasping. "I think I will take one of your eyes as payment. But first, I'll take you another way. Largeness or no, I still _like_ you." He let go of her abruptly and bent his head to lick along her jawline from chin to temple. Alice shuddered at the sensation and used both hands to push reflexively at his chest. He didn't budge; just laughed softly in her ear and lowered himself until he was straddling her hips where she half-sat, half-lay against the cracked frame of the cot.

Alice was a few short yards from freedom, but was trapped as surely as if she was locked in Newgate Prison. Her eyes yearned toward the open air. Stayne interpreted the direction of her look correctly, and laid both his hands on her shoulders, leveraging his weight to force her prone on the sand floor of the hut. She fought him, and lost, and knew, looking up into his ravaged face stamped with the incongruous wracking of hatred and desire, that there could be no getting herself out of it by wits this time. Still, she had to try, and try fast. With her pinned, he kept her there by pressing one hand flat on her chest. The other moved to unfasten the lacing on his breeches.

* * *

The Outlands wabe was a dismal affair of yellowed marsh grass, strewn with beached kelp and liberally sprinkled with sand. It could hardly be called a wabe at all, but for the fact that no other grass in the area was quite like it, and that it grew in a radiating pattern out from a broken sundial. The weathered gray stone was cracked from base to lip and streaked with salt deposits. The obsidian face was so marred by sun and wind that all the numbers had been etched away. Still, the narrow slate gnomon was intact, and cast a clear shadow that would have stood at brillig time, had there been any time indicators left. The shadow was odd, because the sun was hidden behind gray, scudding clouds, as it usually was in this remote western shore of the Outlands.

Had there been anyone to see, which there wasn't, he might have noticed that the gnomon's odd little shadow suddenly began to grow and stretch, lengthening down the sundial's pillar and groping in a sharp wedge along the yellowed wabe. If shadows could groan, which they couldn't, this one would have done so, which would have startled the nonexistent observer even more.

It was a good thing, then, that no one was about, because what happened next may well have frightened that poor soul into a coronary attack, which is a terrible thing to do to someone whether he exists or not. Out of the agonized, non-groaning shadow, an odd creature called a tove came frolicking and wriggling. Close behind the tove—grasping it by the tail, in fact—danced a beautiful lady all in white, with an overdone sense of delicacy and a slightly unbalanced attitude. Accompanying her was a teal-eyed cat with a wide smile and lovely fur striped in dove-gray and turquoise, whose sharp eyes looked around intently and whose head revolved a full turn without being accompanied by the rest of its body.

Behind the cat, holding a dormouse dressed impeccably in a white cravat and a red overcoat, stepped a pale, green-eyed man in a battered but dapper top hat. His orange hair spun wildly out from beneath the hat. His face was haggard, leeched pale by far more than the mercury poisoning that was the hazard of his trade. A feverish combination of hope and dread shone in his eyes, and as soon as he was clear of the shadow, he rushed to the edge of the wabe, crying, "Which way? Which way now?"

The tove pointed to the southwest. "That way, guv'nor. You'll sees the channel, but don't worry; it's an illusion, see. No more than knee deeps, it is. They're on the other sides, past the trees, like."

The Hatter didn't hear a word past "guv'nor." He handed the Dormouse to the Queen (Mally huffed mightily at this) and was off and running in the direction the tove indicated, arms akimbo, long legs leaping and stuttering to keep in balance over the deep sand and jagged rocks. The Cheshire Cat stared thoughtfully after him a moment and lashed his bushy tail. Then, to nobody's surprise, he disappeared. "Quickly now," murmured the White Queen, and cast a discerning eye over the broken sundial.

"Still brillig," Mallymkun piped up, seeing the direction of Mirana's gaze and turning to look for herself. She twitched her whiskers in admiration. "Nice going, tove."

The tove waved off her compliment. "I comes with you," it said warily, skipping after Mirana as she began to pick her way as fast as decorum allowed across the rocks. "But I stays in the back, see. They eats us, like I says."

Ahead of them, the Hatter had reached the edge of the water. He hesitated there a moment, gauging the tove's claim. The channel looked to be some forty feet across, very swift-moving, and very deep. He cast this way and that doubtfully, but there was no other way across save the open and very turbulent ocean. He'd have to trust the tove, there was nothing else for it. But if he was washed out to sea, away from Alice, he'd make a meal of the wee lying rodent himself.

He thought of Alice, and of Stayne and the Red Queen. A dark, reckless feeling came over him, as it always did during times like this, calming his whirling mind and firming his purpose. Tarrant raised his head and glared across the water. He not so much stepped into the channel as jumped into it, and nearly fell in surprise when he found that it indeed was only knee-deep, with a nice firm pebbly bottom. Although, he observed as he sloshed through the current, it was quite cold. The tove would have done better to warn him about that.

He shook his feet, catlike, when he reached the rocky beach on the other side. There wasn't much to see on this new horizon; just gray sky meeting gray sea to each side, and ahead of him, the low rocky coastline of a dismal island. A dark grove of stunted trees held fast against the eternal wind perhaps half a mile ahead. They were the only outstanding landmark, and Tarrant focused on them as a gust of wind nearly lifted his hat from his head; he grabbed it with both hands and jammed it down tight. "Ah, the bracing breath of the Outlands," he said with ironic heartiness, and took a lungful of the cold, salt-tinged air. He checked to make sure his sword was still in its scabbard, wished he'd had time to exchange his natty trousers for the kilt-and-plaid battle dress of the Outlanders, and broke into a run.

After three strides, he was interrupted by the Cheshire Cat, who chose that moment to pop his head into view, grinning down at the Hatter in a maddening fashion. Tarrant glared doubtfully up at the vanishing feline. "What are you up to, Chessur?" he asked, but did not pause in his stride. The beach was littered with loose rocks and deep sand, making the footing treacherous. Still, the Hatter had worry for Alice to goad him, and went skittering along at a speed that would have impressed a sandpiper.

"Do you have a plan?" the Cat drawled, his bobbing head keeping effortless pace with the running man. It was most maddening. Tarrant did his best to ignore it.

"Of course. Rescue Alice from a horrible fate. Haven't you been paying attention?" the Hatter's voice was quiet, deadly focused, and not at all out of breath despite his labors.

The Cat flattened his ears. "So that's it then? Just rush in there, willy-nilly, straight into whatever trap might be waiting for you?"

The Hatter slit greeny-gold eyes at the irritating feline and hurdled a particularly large boulder at the edge of the sand. "Alice is in that trap, Chessur. The least I can do it share it with her. The most I can do is get her out. I only hope we have enough time."

The Cat regarded him a moment, in a wary sort of approval. At last he said, "At least allow me to go first, and create a diversion if we need one. We're no good to Alice if we're dead."

* * *

If she was going to do something, it would have to be right now. Inspired by what she could only deem insanity, Alice reached swiftly up and cupped the sides of Stayne's face between her palms. She was rewarded by a startled look and stillness. There was no time to ponder what it was about her non-hostile touch that made him hesitate; she simply thanked her stars that her earlier revulsion to him hadn't made him react violently now.

The tendons in her neck strained as she lifted her head as far as his downward pressure on her chest allowed. "We think of a key, each in his prison," she whispered, her lips inches from Stayne's own. "Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison."

He blinked at her. Alice felt him relax fractionally. "What do you mean?" he asked, and sounded, for the first time, unsure. He frowned down at her, suspicious. "What do you know?" A horrible grin split his face. He curled one arm around her head, fingers tightening in her hair, and said softly, "Tell me about the key, Alice, or I'll make you pay."

Long-buried memories stirred at his tone. She'd heard him speak that way before: that soft, sneering menace. It was the same tone he'd used on the Hatter as she'd sat hidden in the teapot. Stayne even had her in a similar headlock. "_You'll lose your heads,_" he'd sneered. Alice remembered peeking out of the teapot's spout; she'd seen the Knave recoil in disgust and something very like fear when the Hatter had replied, "_Already lost them,_" in a choked but entirely whimsical voice.

Madness, thought Alice, in a leap of intuition. There was nothing the Knave, in his eternal craftiness, feared more than losing his mind. She beamed up at him, putting everything she had into smiling crazily, as if she was not this moment pinned by a strong man intent upon revenge and rape. "The key to your mind, dear," she whispered dramatically, determined to ride this wave of inspiration as far as it would take her. "The Gates showed it to me."

Stayne went very still. "They didn't." He made a sound that was something between a laugh and a croak. "They couldn't. How could they? They showed me—nothing. _Nothing_. A life with a monster, stretching eternally ahead to absolutely nothing." A shudder wracked him; he let go of Alice, so that she was now trapped by nothing more than his weight. He stared at her face but didn't seem to see her. Slowly, very carefully, she began to slide herself up far enough to support her upper body with her hands.

Stayne was on her again in a flash. Alice gave a sharp cry of surprise as he slammed her back to the hard-packed sand. "No, you don't," he hissed, between clenched teeth. Using both his knees, he forced her legs apart and knelt between them. The smile on his face was as twisted and unpleasant as the light in his single eye. "Alice," he said. He lingered over her name, as if he could devour it with his voice. "Scream. Scream for me. It's time."

* * *

At half past ten, Helen Kingsleigh came in out of the stormy night. She leaned her soaked parasol against the umbrella rack in the hall, removed her equally wet travel cloak, and looped it over a peg beside Alice's still-damp overcoat. Despite her travel weariness, she lingered a moment and lifted the blue sleeve of her daughter's garment to her face. With a sigh and a rare smile, Helen rubbed her nose and cheeks gently along the fabric, smelling rain and the hint of Alice's unique fragrance, a green-leaf vanilla well spiced with cinnamon. Even as a little girl, her youngest child had smelled like that: secretive and sweet and exotic. Margaret had smelled of perfumed talc and brocade, but Alice had smelled wild, like her father. It had not surprised Helen, not really, that her youngest child had followed Charles's footsteps, fairer sex or no.

Yet she had come again to her childhood home, and just today had traveled to the Ascot estate to resign her position as liaison to the Far East with the Ascot Trading Company. While Alice had insisted that she intended to spend a while traveling, Helen harbored a secret hope that she did not dare mention to Alice. Her headstrong youngest daughter had long ago learned to turn a deaf ear to her mother's wishes for her future. Helen understood this and bore her no more ill will for it than she had borne her late husband for his own dreams.

However, she did wish that Alice would feel the tug of time at last, find herself a worthy young man, marry him, and settle within a reasonable travel distance to begin producing grandchildren. She was not Charles, and did not pretend to understand his ambitions, nor Alice's. She was merely a mother, and could not help wanting what she wanted. It was enough that Alice was happy and fulfilled in her life. Now that she had abandoned her career, though, Helen could not help the vaunting hope that the girl would turn to more ladylike and proper pursuits at last.

In fact, she'd met a suitable young man just that afternoon, the nephew of her dear old Hampshire friends, visiting from Cornwall with the intent to move down permanently to oversee the running of the estate. He'd been most agreeable and not a little handsome, fresh off exercising the horses on the downs and full of amiable good cheer and energy. A match for Alice, Helen had thought contentedly, and began plotting ways to arrange a meeting. After all, Alice had abundant free time now, and had made no immediate plans to depart that her mother was aware of.

Although still palpably excited at the prospect of matchmaking, Helen decided it would be prudent not to mention it to Alice tonight. No, she'd just go along and check on her, see that she was settled. No doubt the girl was asleep, and so she should be after the day she must have had, traveling the weary way to Ascot's and back. Helen was exhausted herself. She'd see Alice tucked in, then be away to bed herself.

So thinking, she went up the curving staircase with the light tread of a much younger woman. The house was quiet save for the occasional distant roll of thunder as the storm retreated toward the sea. Alice's door was shut. Helen lifted the latch and pushed it open carefully, not wanting to wake her daughter. She knew something was amiss as soon as she saw that the gas lamps were still lit. Frowning, she pushed the door wide.

The bed was neatly made, the coverlet pulled tight. The windows were shut, with the drapes pulled halfway across. Except for the floor, it looked as if no one had been in the room all day, but it was the floor that made Helen clasp the doorframe tightly for strength or balance and murmur a short prayer before she stepped fully inside the room. The floor was a shambles. Papers, torn from a memorandum-book by the look of them, were scattered on the shining parquet along with a protractor and an old sailing-compass. Splinters and shards of some shattered object littered the area, glinting red and white in the dim yellow light from the gas lamps. In the center of the wreckage was a dark stain, perhaps ink, that reflected the light in a dull, sluggish sort of way.

"Alice!" Helen cried, and darted into the room, knowing nobody was there but certain this was the scene of some terrible action against her daughter. She scooped up some of the scattered pages and scanned them quickly, but they made no sense—just scribbles of some mathematical notations, nothing in plain English. Her heartbeat quickened in time to her mounting anxiety. Kneeling, she picked up a handful of the strange shards. They were sharp and dense—too heavy to be wood, too light to be metal—but Helen had no idea what they were or where they had come from. She cast wildly about the room, looking for some other clue to her daughter's whereabouts, but could see nothing else.

Her gaze was drawn back to the wet-looking ink stain on the floor. Her scattered thoughts could make no sense of what had happened or where Alice might be. Involuntarily, she tightened her fingers around the red and white shards, and gasped at the sharp pain when they cut into her skin. Helen opened her hand and let them fall into the black puddle.

A drop of blood fell from her cut hand into the inky substance. It rippled in an unpleasant way that prickled the fine hair on the back of Helen's neck, although there was no reason for it. She thought of herself as a realist, a rational woman with no superstitions and a worldly view of things. But right then, reason aside, Helen Kingsleigh was certain that the shards and the strange black ink had something to do with her daughter's disappearance. She was frightened by the thought, and quite unable to move as the small puddle rippled again, as if a wind was blowing across it.

"Oh, Alice," her mother whispered. "What has happened to you this time?"

* * *

Iracebeth marched grimly down the slope. There, at the base of the small hill, lay the hovel she shared with Ilosovic, scantily protected from the eternal wind by its sad little grove of trees. In there was where he would be doing all the things to Alice that Iracebeth wanted him to do to her. That he had refused her advances was an affront to her femininity. That he would spurn her—_her_, the Queen of Hearts and Underland's rightful ruler—in favor of an Overworld foreigner was an affront to the very core of who she was. It was unforgivable.

Stayne, damn him, had sworn blind that he would make her watch. Otherwise, he'd execute Alice himself when he was done, thereby denying Iracebeth the direct pleasure of revenge.

And she? She had agreed to it, willing to be party to his depravity in order to satisfy her own need, which was to grab Alice's golden mass of hair with one hand and slit her pale throat with the other. She might never have Stayne, but she would have this. Iracebeth was determined; so determined, she thought, that she was willing to suffer the humiliation of watching the object of her desire slake his lust on the object of her hatred. It was worth the price, she told herself, to be the one to kill Alice in the end. That was worth any price. And maybe, just maybe, with both of their needs met, and Alice's blood on both their hands, the bond Iracebeth wanted so badly could happen. Once Alice was dead, there was nothing to scheme about or hope for. They could have each other, freely and without reserve.

It hadn't happened that way, and Iracebeth now faced the likelihood that it wasn't going to. Far from making her watch, Stayne had left her for dead, had taken Alice back to the hovel that she herself shared with him. The former Queen quivered with rage at that notion. Did he think that he could ravish the girl until he was sated, and then kill her all on his own, without hearing a thing about it from her?

The sand at the foot of the dune was deep, blown into drifts by the everlasting wind. It slowed Iracebeth down, but she refused to do anything so undignified as run. Revenge was best when served cold, just like jellied tadpoles and caviar. The thought made her mouth water; she took a firmer hold on her sharp-edged rock and slogged relentlessly through the sand. Her head pounded, but the pain this time served only to make her more angry. The hovel's doorway was yards away, then feet, and then she was at the threshold, watching and listening to the thrashing within.

Stayne was in there with Alice, all right. The Knave had the girl pinned to the floor against the cot-frame. He knelt between her legs in such a manner as to leave nothing uncertain about his intentions. However, he appeared to be at a stalemate, because the damnable girl was fighting him. She struggled so mightily that it took both Stayne's hands to pin her in place, which meant he had no limbs left to divest either himself or her of clothing and perform the deed.

If she were not so angry, Iracebeth might have laughed at him.

As she stepped into the hut, she could just see Alice's pale face below the Knave's straining shoulder. The girl's eyes, dark with torment, caught Iracebeth's own and held. Even as she hated the familiarity, Iracebeth recognized and understood that look. She wavered, feeling the sort of kinship with Alice she had not felt since the girl had first appeared naked on her croquet-ground, looking as awkward as Iracebeth herself so often felt.

Of course, that kinship had been formed under false pretenses. Alice had betrayed her; had never been with her from the start. Iracebeth licked her lips. Her face hardened, and Stayne, unaware of anything except the willful girl beneath him, chose that moment to call his former queen a monster.

Iracebeth flinched at the sudden pain in her chest, for it felt that way—as if her Knave had dealt her a physical blow. It was one thing for him to denounce her to her face, but quite another to hear him say such a thing about her to their mutual sworn enemy. Iracebeth saw the cords stand out in Alice's neck as the girl tried to slip out from beneath her tormentor. Stayne seemed momentarily absorbed in his own dark melancholy. She raised the rock in both hands.

Perhaps it was that movement that brought Stayne back to himself, for he stirred and renewed his grip on Alice, forcefully parting her legs and working his own between them. This was what he'd wanted her to see, to hear, to remember: this eager rending of Alice's young flesh even as he'd spurned her own, much more regal and more willing, for so long. He'd wanted her to see, of course; but he'd intended her to be under his own control when she did, to make his power over her complete.

In that instant, though, Iracebeth knew she couldn't bear it. An unexpected weapon had been placed into her hands—not the rock, but the fact that her presence had gone unnoticed by Stayne and, for some reason she couldn't fathom, unremarked by Alice. Her lips curled back from her teeth.

"Alice. Scream," Stayne panted. The wanting in his voice, the way it broke upon her name, was so undisguised that all of Iracebeth's confusion and uncertainty boiled away in a surge of fury, envy, and heartbreak. He had never said _her_ name that way. "Scream for me," the Knave repeated. "It's time."

"You're out of time," the Red Queen corrected with a hiss, and plunged the rock down.

* * *

Chessur materialized fully as the Hatter plunged through the stand of trees. Small twigs and thorns scratched his skin, but he didn't so much as blink nor slow his headlong sprint. They spotted the ramshackle hut as soon as they emerged from the spiteful little grove. Chessur's fur was a disarrayed rumple, but there was no time to pause and lick it smooth again, not with Tarrant drawing his broadsword at a full run and pounding toward the hut. A moment more and the idiot would be calling Alice's name, drawing the attention of any enemy within half a mile—and the island was scarcely larger than that, by the look of things.

A glance back over his shoulder showed that they were still quite alone. Mirana and the others clearly lacked the Hatter's sense of urgency. Chessur repressed a sigh. It was time to take things into his own paws.

The streak of blue-and-silver scarcely registered with Tarrant and he closed the final steps to the hut. It was ominously quiet, its empty doorway leering at a crazed angle. The doorway seemed to mock him, taunting that it knew awful things, terrible secrets about what transpired within, and dared him to intervene. The Hatter scowled at it. Impertinent doorways were one of the many things he didn't need right then, and he had a sudden impulse to slash this one to bits, just to show it.

But that would keep him from Alice even longer, and he had waited more than long enough as it was. The Cheshire Cat flew past him and darted through the doorway without pause, which proved sufficient distraction for the Hatter to renew his grasp on both his sense of purpose and his sword-hilt. He steeled himself against the worse of what he feared he'd find inside, and went through the door after the Cat like fiery-maned Vengeance itself.

It was dark inside the hut with his body filling the doorway, but Chessur's yowl of displeasure told him what it took his eyes a few seconds to catch up on: the place was empty. There were a few rude cups and bowls scattered next to an overturned, rickety wooden table. A broken cot-frame against the far wall was strewn with rushes. Beside the cot was a sandy hollow that showed signs of a recent scuffle: deep gouges were scored in the sand, and Chessur sat staring at a dark stain in the hollow, his tail bristled and lashing.

Tarrant felt as if his heart was going to sink right through his boot-soles and keep on going. He laid the sword down with trembling hands and squatted beside the Cat. He put out one bandaged, long-fingered hand and touched the dark, sticky substance, but he could already smell it and knew it was blood before he completed the movement.

The Cheshire Cat looked up in time to see the Hatter's face darken around falcon-gold eyes. "Eff they've harmed hem, Ah'll keel them mah oan sailf." The Cat, for once, found himself in complete agreement with the Hatter at his very worst. Tarrant's rage and anguish were so plain on his face that Chessur could almost see the images in his mind: Alice cold and afraid, alone and unarmed, torn and bleeding beneath the gleeful and blood-speckled faces of the Red Queen and the Knave of Hearts.

He fears he'll never see Alice alive again, thought Chessur, and the notion made his own mercenary soul quiver in guilt at its eternal self-interest.

In the next instant, though, cold fury replaced the bleakness on Tarrant's face. The Hatter rose in a single swift movement and took up his sword, turning his back on the tell-tale wreckage of the hut's interior. "Queckly, Chessur," he said, and strode out without a backward glance.

The wind blew strongly as he emerged, bringing with it the smell of the ocean and, now, the faint calls of his Queen as she made her way up the strand toward the grove of trees. The Hatter paused, turning toward the sound of her voice with the habit of long obedience and unquestioned loyalty. Chessur floated up a little way behind him but remained uncharacteristically silent, waiting to see what his friend would choose. He sensed it would do no good to make a suggestion now.

"We'll see bittah froom high groond," the Hatter said in the end, and turned toward the sandy hill that protected the grove from the worst of the wind. His voice carried an echo of compromise and despair; they'd be able to see Mirana from the top of the hill, and they'd also be able to see the whole of the land, including any traces of Alice.

* * *

The rock caught Stayne solidly behind the ear, and he collapsed on top of Alice without a groan. Iracebeth stood rigid, staring at the long, sinewy length of the Knave and the blood that welled up from his head and dripped to pool in the little hollow where she'd slept for so many years. She clutched the rock tightly; Alice could see how white her knuckles were, and how they shook.

In a surge of adrenaline powered by fear and self-preservation, she shoved the limp Stayne away. He rolled bonelessly to the side and continued to bleed on the sand without moving. Alice could hear his faint, raspy breathing, and went temporarily limp with relief that he wasn't dead. That was strange in itself; she ought to be glad if he was dead, after what he'd tried to do with her. How curious that she was not.

She shook her head and sat up, keeping her eyes on Iracebeth. This was no time to be puzzling out her reaction to an extreme circumstance. She got her feet beneath her and stood, feeling shaky and lightheaded and very thirsty, with the beginnings of a fierce headache to boot. Most of her sadly-abused skirt fell away with her movement, and her camisole was in a sorry state indeed, all matted with sand and sweat, but she was alive and whole, and for the moment, that was what mattered.

The Red Queen was still staring at the Knave, her whole body trembling now. Alice edged as far away from her as the close confines of the shack allowed, trying to work out how dangerous she was and how to get away.

"Stayne..." Iracebeth said in a drained-sounding voice, so different from the childlike lisping pique Alice remembered from her last visit. "I didn't mean to do it. But you had to know—you needed to learn how it feels to be hated instead of loved..." She trailed off and looked up sharply as Alice moved, sidling along the wall. "You," she said in a very different tone, one that dripped accusation and venom. She smiled at Alice, who was suddenly quite as frightened of her as she had been of the Knave. Iracebeth looked quite unhinged. Her once perfectly-coiffed red curls snarled about her head like vindictive snakes. Her large moon-face, devoid of its heavy cosmetics, was stark and worn with the burden of carrying the weight of defeat (and of her skull, thought Alice uncharitably). Her shoulders were bent, and her hands trembled as if with a palsy, although Alice was keenly aware that the Queen's grip on the sharp black rock was in no way diminished.

"You," said Iracebeth again. She turned away from the prone body of the Knave and advanced on Alice, who took another sliding step along the wall toward the doorway. "This is all your fault. He'd have loved me if he hadn't met you, if you hadn't killed the Jabberwocky, if you hadn't taken away my power and my beauty and made him love you, he'd have loved me in the end so it _is all your fault!_" Her voice grew louder and wilder as she spoke, until she screamed the last four words, spittle flying, her face deranged. She rushed at Alice, holding the rock before her. Alice bolted, knocking over a low table in her haste. Iracebeth stumble over the handmade containers that had been stacked on it and Alice squeezed past her, out the door, and ran.

Into the trees she went, tearing through the brambles of astonishingly thick undergrowth as they tore at her. Iracebeth was screaming behind her, clearly in pursuit, and although Alice had no doubt that she was the stronger of the two, she was at the moment far from her physical best. After the terrible pounding her trip through the Gates had given her body, and the abuse she'd suffered at Stayne's hands, she was not even sure she felt equal to running away, much less standing to fight. She got clear of the trees and limped barefoot along a shell- and rock-encrusted shoal that quickly gave way to the sea. A broad channel separated her island from the mainland, or perhaps another larger island, but its current ran too swiftly, churning the blue-gray water that looked to be several fathoms deep. Even in a boat, Alice might have hesitated to cross, and she was a strong oarsman.

Biting her lip, she backed away from the tantalizing hint of land and cast around for another avenue of escape. There was none. The land curved back from the point where she stood, sweeping around to meet the low sandy ridge that separated this side of the island from the side containing the rocky spit and the Gates. There was nowhere to go, no place to hide. Alice decided, with sinking spirits, that the Gates were her only hope of refuge. They had brought her here; maybe, if she was clever and lucky enough, she could figure out how to make them take her back.

Iracebeth emerged from the trees, flailing about as she tore more of her sad, once-regal garments free of the hampering branches. She spotted Alice and shrieked in triumph. "I'll have your head yet!" she cried, and came straight after her. Alice spared a final glance at the unreachable land across the channel, gathered up the remains of her skirt to save what she could of her dignity, and hobbled along the beach away from the Red Queen, heading around the island to the point where the dune met the shore.

* * *

With a groan, the Knave of Hearts raised himself on his elbows. He was alone on the floor of the hut, feeling inexcusably weak. His head hurt terribly. A gloved hand raised to the source of the hurt came away wet and he cursed, wincing. Of course, that was just his luck. He'd gotten so close to taking Alice, had reveled in the smell of her fear overlaying the sweet scent of her flesh, only to be struck from behind. Now Alice was gone, and the only person who could have hit him was gone as well.

Iracebeth. He'd not have believed it. The woman had been thoroughly cowed, he'd been so certain of it. Devoid of crown and scepter, there was nothing of worth left of her except her twin desires: to have Stayne as her own, and to exact revenge on Alice. He'd been so sure that the latter was the stronger need, that he'd ruthlessly exploited the former in order to bend her to his will. As he'd expected, she had been compliant in the end while protesting mightily from the first. Something had gone wrong in his careful planning, and now it was likely that Iracebeth had Alice with her.

The thought made him cold, and he wondered how long he had been unconscious. Apprehension galvanized him to his feet, and although he swayed drunkenly for a moment, he was able to remain upright while the sick-feeling fog lifted from his mind. As soon as he felt reasonably able, he staggered out into the wind and light.

They had decided, in the end, that Alice should die before the Gates which would bring her to them. What sort of magic this might invoke, Stayne didn't know and didn't care. The Gates were old beyond reckoning, and the act of sacrificing a life, especially a life as powerful as Alice's, tapped deeply into the strange powers that made Underland what it was. Perhaps the Gates would be forced open again. Perhaps nothing at all would happen. Either way, vengeance would be theirs. Stayne was sure that Iracebeth had taken Alice to the Gates to perform the deed herself.

He didn't blame her for wanting to kill the girl herself, but his rage would be terrible if she killed Alice before he'd fulfilled himself on her. The heaviness in his loins lent him speed as he ran for the Gates. He must not be too late, whatever else happened. Depraved he may be, often joyfully so, but he felt no stirring of excitement at the notion of necrophilia. He wanted Alice alive and resisting when he took her, so that she would know in the end that his power was greater than hers.

If Iracebeth had already denied him that, she would pay with her life. No matter if the resulting loneliness drove him insane. His head hurt fiercely and continued to bleed, but Stayne ignored it and set his jaw. Up over the dune he went, striding on his long legs, and came down to the rocky causeway in time to see a rare, stray shaft of sunlight break from the clouds and turn the western horizon briefly to molten gold.

The sun had nearly set; it was past brillig-time. He'd been unconscious much longer than he'd thought. Stayne spewed forth a vindictive stream of curses, and began to run along the rocks.

* * *

Alice staggered to the nearer Gate, the red one, only a few yards ahead of Iracebeth. The Red Queen was breathing heavily, her shoulders bent beneath the weight of her large head. She had fallen several times in the pursuit around the island, her top-heavy build no match for the treacherous sand and rocks and the capricious wind. Always, Alice had managed to stay ahead of her, even though by the time they reached the rocks on the far side, Iracebeth could have followed the girl's bloody footprints and found her. Her feet were cut to ribbons, which gave the Red Queen a grim sort of satisfaction. She should not be the only one made to suffer a body ill-equipped to deal with her environment. Alice's bare feet, and the pain she must be feeling because of them, gave Iracebeth the strength to continue the chase.

And now, at last, she had Alice cornered. The tangled mass of golden hair finally stopped bobbing out of reach before her own determined steps. Clinging with thin bare arms to the white Gate of Ivory, Alice turned to face her pursuer.

Iracebeth smiled and showed her the sharp rock, still wet with Stayne's blood. For a moment, she simply stood there, getting her breath back, savoring the moment. She had Alice trapped, with a narrow spit of land at her back and nothing else at all except the cold and turbulent sea. "What will you do?" she asked the ragged figure of the girl who had tormented her thoughts for so long. "Where can you possibly go, to escape me?"

For a moment, she thought Alice wasn't going to answer, and shrugged. It didn't matter to her one way or another. All she had to do was die. But then Alice straightened up and pushed her hair out of her face, regarding Iracebeth from across the few yards that still separated them. Her face was wary but composed, and the Queen was reminded unpleasantly of the countenance Alice had presented when she'd faced her darling Jabberwocky six years ago. Impatiently, she banished the thought. Then, Alice had worn the armor of the White Knight and held the Vorpal Sword. Then, she'd had the White Queen and an army of subversives at her back. Now she was alone, unarmed, clad only in a bit of seaweed and silk. She was at Iracebeth's mercy, not the other way round.

She mustn't be allowed to forget that.

Calmly, Alice said, "Let me see. I could jump into the sea, which would kill me from cold or drowning." Her brown eyes were steady on the Red Queen's face, but Iracebeth scowled.

"You won't do it," she said sharply. "You're not a coward. Only cowards take the suicide path."

"But it would deny you the pleasure of killing me," answered Alice. "And that's what you want most, isn't it?"

Iracebeth hesitated. Alice was very still, watching her. "Or is there something you want more?" she asked, so softly that Iracebeth could scarcely hear her over the crash of waves and wind.

Her fingers flexed around the rock, and she remembered what it felt like to drive it down with enough force to crush a man's skull. Not just any man, she thought, but Ilosovic Stayne, the Knave. Her Knave. Her man. "He was supposed to be mine," she whispered. Her eyelids flickered, and she wished she could blot out the memory, which was far more terrible even than watching the execution of her former husband. This, she had done herself.

Iracebeth looked up miserably, and had only time to gasp when she saw her mistake. In her grief, she had failed to see Alice moving quickly, and the girl was on top of her before she could move to defend herself. They both went down in a tangle of flailing limbs, with Iracebeth screeching at the top of her lungs and Alice fighting in silent, grim resolve.

* * *

In the end, it was Alice who prevailed, but only just. One moment, Iracebeth was on top of her, digging steely nails into her upper arms, her teeth bared; Alice could feel her own strength ebbing, and her grip kept slipping as she scrabbled at the Queen's fingers, trying to break her hold on the rock and keep her from raising it high enough to use it. In the next, Iracebeth jerked violently forward in an effort to free her weapon hand, her head overbalanced her body, and she fell, striking her temple on a protruding spur of black stone. Her grip loosened and Alice rolled away, getting clear by inches as Iracebeth lunged for her again.

Alice gauged the tall Gates with a desperate eye and moved as quickly as she could to get herself between them. "Come on, please," she murmured, half demand and half prayer, looking up at the broken tips where they nearly touched the glowering clouds. She raised her arms skyward, beseeching, willing herself to feel the power of the vortex that had opened up before and brought her here. "Please."

Nothing happened. Defeated, Alice sagged back, suddenly too weary to even support her own weight. She stumbled back a few steps until her back came solidly up against the pitted red surface of the Gate of Horn. Iracebeth picked her way over the jagged rocks, her wild gaze never leaving Alice's face. She opened her mouth to reason with the Queen, or maybe beg for her life, but something stopped her. Maybe it was that Iracebeth at her best was not the sort of person who listened to reason, and she looked far from her best right now. Maybe it was that she was too proud to beg, even for her life.

She did, however, feel a pang of regret that she would not see the Hatter again, after she'd come all this way. "Things have gone so terribly wrong, haven't they?" she murmured. Although she was cornered against an unyielding red pillar with a crazed former monarch advancing on her with death and nothing else at all in her eyes, Alice felt strangely calm. She wondered if her father had felt like that, in the moments before his death. She hoped so. It wasn't a bad feeling at all.

Iracebeth laughed, sounding even more deranged. "You have no idea," she said. "And you're hardly the one to tell me how wrong things have gone, because you were the one who caused the whole thing!"

In a detached sort of way, Alice realized that Iracebeth was responding to her statement. The Queen was directly in front of her now, staring up at her with her chin jutting out. She lifted the sharp, jagged black rock until it filled Alice's vision. "No, I didn't mean—" Alice sighed. It was no use arguing. She remembered what Stayne had said about false dreams and true ones, and was suddenly weary and sad beyond bearing that she would not live long enough to discover if her dream about the Hatter had been a true one. "It's too bad," she told the menacing rock that obscured her view of Iracebeth, "That explanations take such a dreadful time."

* * *

At the word "time," the Gate of Horn put forth the most delicate of shivers, from its broken tip to its strong roots deep in the earth. Alice felt it, and her fingers clutched reflexively at the rough-smooth texture of the red pillar. Time stirred and cast a bleary eye down on the remote tip of the Outlands where the gates had stood for as long as memory had existed. The other eye looked out into another world, where a mother fretted about time. Echoes of other voices, all saying the same word about the same thing but with different meanings, collided and rebounded. The Knave of Hearts, the Red Queen, Helen Kingsleigh, her daughter Alice, and most infuriating of all, Tarrant Hightopp, who had twice murdered the Time, all spoke in endless circles until it was quite enough to drive an anthropomorphic personification mad.

Time flew and crawled, casting back through myriad gateways while the Gate of true dreams broadcast its insistent red beacon and thrummed beneath the fingers of a human girl who was also champion of the Queen of Underland.

The toves of the Outlands knew something was amiss, and paused in their gyring and gimbling to sniff toward the remote island just as the sunray escaped to touch the sea.

_'Twas brillig_, sang the Gate, thrumming insistently and disrupting Time, shattering the Synclock over and over to show the error, that Alice and the Hatter had touched during the chiming, and therefore the Gates should not have come into play at all. Time had broken its own rules, and must do so again to set things right.

_All bloody right_, raged Time, who had as much a chance to stop Dreams as an oyster had to stop the tides, and knew it. Because dreams could not be stopped, it was Time that stopped, right at the moment that Iracebeth drew back her arm to strike.

* * *

Stayne caught sight of Alice, pinned against the red Gate by Iracebeth. He shouted at the Red Queen to stop, and leaped from rock to rock, his long legs bringing him rapidly to the site of sacrifice. The tableau struck him as weird only when he was about ten feet away, because only then did he realize that nobody had moved. Alice was still, clutching the pillar behind her. Iracebeth was only inches from her, her lips lifted in a snarl, her arm raised with the rock, ready to bring it down on Alice's skull.

The Knave stared. "What are you doing?" he asked, but neither woman so much as turned an eyelash in his direction. Poleaxed by this unexpected turn of events, he reached out and was about to touch Alice's immobile face when a bloodcurdling yell rose behind him, startling him nearly out of his skin. Whirling, Stayne saw something even more unbelievable than the impossibly-frozen Iracebeth and Alice. Brandishing a sword, corkscrew hair streaming back beneath his battered hat, Tarrant Hightopp was running along the rocky coast in Stayne's wake.

Stayne felt a kind of crumbling in his mind. He gaped like an idiot, unable to move or make sense of what he was seeing. A fainter cry dragged his attention from the red-haired madman to the small ridge, where he saw the unlikely figure of the White Queen floating down the slope, calling something that neither he nor the Hatter, apparently, could make out.

The Hatter stopped a few paces away and swung the sword above his head, his eyes fixed on Stayne. Stayne remembered that sword. He'd nearly died upon it, and it seemed now that the Hatter had returned to finish the job. "How-how can this be?" he stammered.

The Hatter's face split into a mad grin. "Dinnae ye worry aboot it," he said. "It woan be for long." Although the Knave was more than a foot taller than the Hatter, anyone who looked upon them would have sworn that, even hatless, the White Queen's milliner dwarfed the seven-foot-tall Knave. Tarrant's face remained contorted by fury, but green seeped back into his eyes, replacing the burning gold. Somehow, Stayne found this indication of sanity even more disturbing. "Where is she, Stayne? Tell me, or I swear I'll kill you where you stand."

Stayne just shook his head, unable in his confusion to speak or even to take his eyes off the sword-wielding Hatter. He gave back a step in the face of the other man's wrath, then two, his feet taking him away from the eerily still scene between Alice and Iracebeth.

Mirana's skirts had so hampered her in the sand that she had hiked them nearly to her waist, queenly propriety be damned. She hastened over the steep little hill with Mally scampering in front of her, urging her to hurry, and the tove lagging worriedly behind, casting continual glances over his shoulder as if he feared getting pounced on and made into dinner.

When they were halfway down the slope, they saw Tarrant and the Knave at the base of the Gates. Mally drew an agitated breath and muttered, "Oh Hatter, he's unarmed, don't kill him, not even him! You'll never be able to live with yourself." Leaving Mirana, the dormouse set off toward the Gates as fast as she could go.

Mirana's longer vision allowed her to see something a great deal more problematic than the issue of the royal haberdasher murdering in cold blood. Kill Stayne or shove him out of the way, it was all the same to her, for there behind the Knave was her sister Iracebeth with something black and sharp-looking raised in her hand, about to strike Alice with it where she stood with her back pressed to the red Gate.

In a most unladylike fashion, the White Queen cupped her hands around her mouth and bellowed, "Tarrant, look! Behind him, do you hear me? Tarrant! It's Alice! Save Alice!"

The Hatter didn't seem to hear her, but instead whirled the sword around his head and advanced on Stayne. Any second now, Iracebeth's arm would fall, and with it, her champion. Hightopp could not or would not see it, and she dared not wait. Mirana hoisted up her skirts again and began to run.

As Stayne faltered back, something caught at the edge of the Hatter's singular attention: caught, and tugged, and held, and tugged some more. He gave in and looked, and what he saw made him drop his sword. It clattered to the rocks, where Stayne cast a nervous glance at it, then an even more nervous one up at its recent wielder. The Hatter paid him no attention.

It was Alice, it really was, gripping the broad curve of the Gate of Horn without moving, her brown eyes staring sightlessly into middle distance. She was as bloodied and disheveled as he was, and a thousand times more beautiful than he remembered because of it. Even utterly still, she was filled with muchness. It was there, in the set of her jaw, the direct gaze of her eyes, the line of her shoulders, the pale flash of her bare thigh that showed through her extremely odd skirt. It looked—and smelled—to be made of seaweed, of all things. Rather dazedly, the Hatter supposed that Overland fashion was neither his business nor his forte, but it staggered him nonetheless to see Alice baring so much leg, and indeed hip. He found it exceedingly distracting, even though she hadn't moved a muscle since he'd caught sight of her.

However strange, though, it was Alice, alive and whole. The former Bloody Red Queen stood before her, looking menacing with her rictus grin and her sharp, heavy stone, but she seemed as unable to bring the rock down as Alice was to get away. As Tarrant pondered this, forgetting about Stayne for the moment (the distraction of that long, bare length of leg did nothing to help his concentration), a toothy grin appeared out of nowhere, just above Iracebeth's head. One by one, her fingers unbent themselves from the rock, which then levitated itself up and back, and appeared to hurl itself into the sea.

The Cheshire Cat emerged around his grin, one paw balancing on Iracebeth's hand. He lifted it away with an expression of feline distaste and began, fastidiously, to groom it with his raspy tongue. The Hatter felt a similar grin break out over his face, which clouded in an instant with the next thought.

"Bravo, Chessur," he said. "But what's wrong with them? Why can't they move?"

The Cat was about to speak, when Tarrant found himself thrown violently to the ground. His chin cracked off a rock. The pain made him roar in fury, and he twisted around to come face to face with Stayne, who had tackled him from behind and now grappled at his throat, his fingers seeking purchase.

"Not...mad," the Knave spat, although his eyes held no shred of sanity as they bulged from their sockets. His fingers worked at Tarrant's throat. "Never."

"Be careful with that word," the Hatter advised in a choked voice. "That's a very long time. Might come to regret it." The fingers had his windpipe now, and Stayne, with lunatic strength, sought to crush his breath where it began. Tarrant's own hands scrabbled desperately to each side, seeking the dropped sword. It was no use. He couldn't find it, and Chessur had vanished. Black spots bloomed in front of his eyes. He closed his hands into fists and used them to pound the Knave in the ribs, the kidneys, but the taller man was too close for him to do much damage. All he did was laugh. His chest bore a great weight, a fire, and he struggled for one more gasp of air, just one, and the chance to see Alice again before the dark claimed him.

Time, reckoning itself redeemed, began to move normally again for all creatures. Time hoped, most devoutly, never to have to deal with Tarrant Hightopp or his ilk ever again, and wished the impertinent Hatter would remember this favor and leave him alone in the future.

The terrible pressure at the Hatter's throat eased. His vision cleared, and so did his mind, until he came to with both hands protectively grasping his throat. Gasping and retching, he sat up. Standing above him, shining in the last light of day as the sun peeked below the clouds as it prepared to dive into the western ocean, stood Alice. She was straight and slim and magnificent, and she held his sword in both hands, leveled at Stayne's throat where he knelt before her. It took Tarrant's oxygen-starved brain a moment to work out which of them was the weapon: the girl or the broadsword.

He scrambled to his feet. He opened his mouth to say her name. It was already there on his tongue when Mirana floated into the corner of his vision and laid a gentle hand on his arm. The Queen looked sideways at him and shook her head very slightly; the smallest of warning shakes.

"It's all right, my champion," the White Queen said, in a voice full of pride and comfort.

The Knave's eyes swiveled from Alice's face to Mirana's. "Lady," he said hoarsely. "Mercy."

The White Queen bowed her head. Tarrant read her indecision in the set of her shoulders; the last time the Knave had asked for her mercy, she had responded that she owed him no kindness. Alice continued to hold the notched blade at Stayne's throat. Chessur was nowhere to be seen, but Mally was perched on a lopsided rock beside Tarrant, watching the scene with horrified fascination.

The Hatter was the only one who saw Iracebeth stir from her posture near the Gate of Horn. She blinked and swiveled her enormous head, taking in at one shrewd glance all that had happened since time had started running again. Unlike the others, she moved swiftly. She stooped like a falcon and plucked up a sliver of metal that lay at her feet, broken from the sword when it had fallen to the rocks. In one swift movement, she grabbed a handful of Stayne's lank black hair and wrenched back his head. With the other hand, she drew the razor-sharp sliver across his throat. A neat line of red appeared for a moment, followed by a great jet of blood as his severed jugular pumped his life into the air.

"Iracebeth!" cried the White Queen, and rushed to her sister's side. She took the piece of metal away from her and folded the shorter woman into her arms as Stayne's body collapsed, twitching, to the wet black rock.

"Oh," breathed Mally.

"Well, that was unexpected," drawled the Cat, half-appearing at the base of the red Gate and wrinkling his aristocratic nose at the body.

Alice lowered the sword. Slowly, she turned to look directly and unerringly at the Hatter. It was excruciating to bear her gaze. It would have destroyed him to look away.

"What are you doing here?" she asked him, in a hollow voice so at odds with her recent display of physical strength. The sword seemed impossibly heavy for her now, and dragged at her shoulder where she held it awkwardly to one side, tip resting on the rock. She was careful not to look down at the thing that had been Ilosovic Stayne.

Tarrant swallowed. "I—we—came to rescue you," he said lamely. He gestured feebly at her, the sword, Iracebeth, Stayne. "But it seems you're quite good at rescuing yourself." That statement held equal parts disappointment in himself and pride in her. Unable for a moment to bear the weight of her level gaze, he looked away. When he looked back, he was stunned to see that she was smiling.

"Hatter," she said. "You're not a dream."

He did not quite know what to say to that. He remembered how certain Alice had been, before Frabjous Day, that she was dreaming, that he was a figment of her imagination. It had worried him to think that he could be so egotistical as to believe himself real, when in truth he was nothing more than a sort of thing in her dream. And yet, at the time, he had clearly remembered existing without knowledge of her. Lately, ever since she'd drunk the Jabberwocky blood and gone away, that had not been the case. Then again, she had known in the end that he was as real as she was.

And still she had left. Probably because he'd been too much of a coward to tell her how he felt about her. It was all very confusing, and he couldn't think where to begin to talk about it, so he settled for the most important thing, which was that she was here now. He had better go cautiously, lest she disappear again. Much as he loved being back at his trade in Court, he was not sure he could bear that. Her _I'll be back before you know it_ had turned into knowing for quite a long time that she was not back at all.

The important thing, Tarrant, he chided himself. She was here now. He said, "You came back," and at once felt like a prize fool for stating something so obvious.

Her smile could have made him believe he'd said the cleverest thing ever. The radiance in her face was like a balm to his soul; his green eyes brightened, and a wide, gap-toothed grin appeared on his own face, quite without his permission. "I said I would," whispered Alice.

Before he could reply, they were interrupted by loud sobs from Iracebeth. Mirana had let go of her and was standing at a chilly distance, arms folded in disapproval.

"I have no sympathy for you, sister," she said in her most regal tone. "You violated the terms of your banishment, and worse, you have killed on holy ground."

The former Red Queen sobbed something that sounded like, "Stayne."

"I can think of no better punishment," Mirana went on relentlessly, "Than what you have already done to yourself. You will be removed to a place where you can no longer access the Gates, and you will have eternity to think about what you have done." She paused and leaned toward her older sister, who had buried her face in her hands and refused to look at her. "And what have you done, Iracebeth?"

Iracebeth sobbed.

"Yes. You have killed the last person you loved." Mirana's voice was flint and steel. She turned her back on her sister with finality. "Come, everyone," she said, her voice softening as she faced them. "It's time to return to the palace." She smiled. Behind her, Iracebeth sank to her haunches, a ball of misery crouched on the rocks. "We have hurts to tend to," the White Queen continued in a gentle voice, "And a welcome to give." She smiled at Alice, who managed a weak grin in return.

The tove popped his head out from a safe distance, accompanied by no less than six of his brethren. "This way, O your majesty!" he called. "We'll guides you safe on your returns, and thanks you for what you've done!" He avoided looking directly at Alice, but the other toves stared at her in wide-eyed wonder. Rumor got around in tove country, it seemed, and they all knew that this was the champion who had slain the Jabberwocky, author of all their misery.

The Cat grinned sleekly and prowled after the toves, just his head and front half visible. Mallymkun gave Alice a long, penetrating stare, then took off after Chessur without a word. Mirana waited on her Hatter and her champion. Tarrant had still been unable to look away from Alice, and he stood there still, waiting for her to move first.

Alice felt distinctly unsteady. She had, in one moment, been waiting for Iracebeth to strike a killing blow. In the next, she'd been staring at the Red Queen's frozen face, and realized that the Knave, the Hatter, and the White Queen had arrived out of thin air. How typical of Underland, she'd thought, and done what she must to help get the situation under control. Stayne's subsequent death had upset her, but she had had a very trying day, and suddenly found herself quite unable to even think how to put one foot in front of the other. Everything looked and sounded very far away. She leaned on the sword for balance, feeling its point dig several inches into the rocky sand.

"Tarrant," she said, his name sounding oddly thick and strange on her tongue. She tried to smile, but her face felt too stiff and numb to respond. She tried to see his face clearly through blurry eyes. It was just as she'd remembered: pale, regular features, with brilliant green eyes and a full mouth below wild orange hair. His attention to her was absolute. Alice felt, or anyway hoped, that this made up for her own inability to focus. "Remember how you said you'd come to rescue me?" Her voice was faint in her own ears. He nodded. "Well," she went on reasonably, as the sword slipped from her unfeeling fingers and her body began to sag under its own weight. "You can do that now, because I think I'm about to faint."

The Hatter caught her. For a moment, she looked up at him, still conscious, absolutely trusting. "Come to my arms, my beamish boy," he whispered. Her eyes closed. He held her to him for an anxious moment, until he could determine that she still breathed. He would not allow Mirana to help him, but picked Alice up and cradled her limp body against his chest—she felt as light and fragile as a bird—and carried her back across the island, away from dead Stayne and grieving Iracebeth, over the dune, across the deceptive channel, and back through the broken sundial's wabe to where their party waited while the sun sank on Salazen Grom.

* * *

_**Author's note**: The so-called nonsense that Alice delivers to Stayne in an attempt to stave him off: "We think of a key, each in his prison/Thinking of a key, each confirms a prison" is quoted from the poem "The Waste Land" by T. S. Eliot, which was published in 1922. Those readers who are discerning in their time lines will note that Eliot's work was published a good 50 years, at least, after the story is set. I have no excuse for this and can make no apology. The elements and strong imagery of despair in Eliot's poem largely inspired this chapter, and it seemed right, somehow, to breach Time itself and insert those lines where they appear. I hope you can overlook this transgression, as well as the woefully long chapter. There seems to me still to be no good way to break it up, given its fractured multiple-POV structure. If anyone has a good idea about how to shorten it, please let me know through a review or PM. My most humble thanks to all who have read and reviewed so far._


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